Breaking Free
by truegold-dragonstar
Summary: Katriel hates silent and repressive Lemos Hold. But when party of dragonriders on Search brings tensions to breaking point, she realises that escape may come at a cost that's too high.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Yes, I know what you're thinking – '****_Another_ one?' Yes, **_**another**_** one. Here I am again! The thing is, it's addictive. I write one fanfiction story… and it fills me with ideas for another one… and then I introduce a minor character who I think really deserves a story of her own… and here it is! It's loosely connected to my two stories about Ista Weyr – in that it features some of the same characters – but it's not a sequel (if anything it's a prequel) so don't worry if you haven't read my other stories. This one will still make sense. Although there are virtual cookies available for people who _have_ read the earlier ones and who spot characters who feature in them when older. Other than Katriel, obviously. She doesn't count.**

**You know, I feel really dumb talking about these stories as 'sequels' or 'prequels'. It sounds a bit grand. They're only little fluffy stories after all, not huge novels or anything. But whatever. Anyway, I hope lots of people are going to review me anyway, because I'm feeling unloved over on my other story where I've reached an all time low of zero reviews for my most recent chapter.**

**Which reminds me - lots of love to all my friends on here. How are you, guys? Let me know what you think of this one; it's a bit different to the others, but then what kind of a writer would I be if I wrote the same story every time?**

**Ok, I feel like I'm rambling now, so I'm going to shut up. I hope you enjoy it, and please, please review!**

* * *

Kat had quick ears, and she was probably the first who heard Egan's wailing. She flicked alarmed eyes across the table at her pretty stepmother, taking care that her posture should not change and betray to her father the small disturbance in his perfectly regimented Hold.

At that moment a louder cry breached the distance and the stone walls between Egan's nursery and the dining hall, and Kat and Fani winced in unison as Galen's heavy eyebrows drew together.

Muttering a few words of excuse, Fani began to get to her feet, the glowlight sliding over her silk dress. She set down her heavy cut-crystal glass of wine, and the light shining through it splashed a pool of dark red light onto the table; it was the same colour as the gleaming fabric, Kat noticed.

'Sit down.' Galen's voice conveyed no understanding that he might ever be disobeyed. 'It is the boy's nurse's job to look after him, not yours.' As Fani subsided in her chair, he turned to Kat. 'I hope _you_ remembered my injunctions today, Katriel?'

Kat caught Fani's quick sympathetic glance as she said demurely, 'Yes, father. Today I worked at my embroidery and I helped Fani and Halina.'

'Excellent.' Her father bit the word off sharply and again they were washed in uncomfortable silence, listening to Egan's cries. In the main body of the hall, the Holders, seated according to rank and situation, chatted and laughed, producing a clamorous sound that rose to the roof of the cavernous hall in the same way that the dancing flames of the huge hearth leapt up the chimney, stirring air currents that lifted and moved the expensive, glowing hangings as they passed.

Only they were silent, thought Kat, bitterly. At the far end of the high table, Harper Tercel and Healer Vidan made valiant, stilted small talk, but neither Kat nor Fani dared make remarks which they were not sure Galen would approve of. She wanted to inform her father cuttingly that for an active girl, embroidery was _not_ an excellent occupation – not even sensible! She could hear herself saying it, knew how she and everyone else would sound and look – but she hadn't the nerve. Kat kept her mouth shut.

Kat studied her father covertly as she ate, her back stiff and her mouthfuls small and refined, as protocol demanded. Galen was a forbidding man who looked much older than his real age – some turns short of forty – with thick black hair and brows and a nose like the beak of a hawk. His eyes were black too, a deep empty colour which gave nothing away. Kat sometimes wondered if there was a person left inside her father at all. When she was younger she'd had nightmares that nothing lived inside her father's head except a set of rules. 'Discipline!' he had roared at her in the dream, swooping down at her like a huge black bird of prey.

Kat shuddered at the memory and then instantly stilled the movement, hoping not to draw her father's ire. She reached out a slightly shaking hand for her glass and took a genteel mouthful of the wine, the sour, fruity taste filling her mouth as she composed herself. She had no taste for wine, but experience had taught her to swallow it without blinking, and certainly without mentioning her distaste to Galen. They said he hadn't always been like this…

Noticing Kat's slight shudder, Fani caught her eye and smiled encouragingly. Kat returned the smile, grateful for her stepmother's quiet support. Fani deserved batter than Galen, Kat thought. She could have had it, too, gentle Fani with her smooth ivory skin and huge dark eyes. Kat knew that the niece of the Lord of Igen had had many suitors. She couldn't conceive what had persuaded Fani to marry her father over a younger and kinder man.

You could cut the tension in this Hold with a knife, Kat thought. Well, if you _had_ a knife. After all, 'Gently bred girls do _not_ carry belt knives, Katriel'.

Kat took a tiny, elegant mouthful of roast wherry, hardly tasting the tender flesh. I'll get fat, she thought bitterly, sitting idle all day and then eating like this. But she didn't dare leave any of the meat on her plate. And it was an insult to old Palla's rich, spicy sauce not to finish off the vegetables. Kat could picture the old woman pouring hours of effort into that sauce in an attempt to entice her two ladies to eat.

She set her back ramrod straight, and forced another mouthful down her constricting throat.

Galen and Fani were eating equally mechanically. What's the point? Kat thought, suddenly. All this rich food, and I don't believe any of us enjoys it. We could be spending the marks on… on what? Inwardly, she sighed. This Hold isn't lacking anything you can buy with money.

It was a long time until the end of dinner. When Galen finally swallowed his last mouthful of wine and rose to his feet, Kat shot upwards as fast as elegance would allow. Fani, slower and more graceful, gave Tercel time to pull her chair back for her as she stood up. Then, as a group, they walked through the hall. Like a sharding procession! thought Kat angrily. The Holders fell silent as their frowning Lord passed, and then the chatter rose up again behind them as if a bubble of quiet followed them.

Galen opened the door at the far end of the hall and stood back to let Fani and Kat pass through. Kat blinked unhappily as Galen fell into step behind her. It was the correct order of precedence, of course, but she couldn't help thinking that a man who was more kind and less correct would have allowed the Healer and Harper to pass through first.

Once out in the hallway, Galen bid them a curt farewell and strode away towards his study. Like an unspoken sigh, the whole atmosphere relaxed. Fani smiled at the two Crafters. 'Good night, Vidan, Tercel,' she said, civilly.

'Good night, my ladies,' said Tercel, bowing to both of them. He was new to the Hold, having arrived from the Harpercrafthall only two sevendays back, but he was already learning that in Lemos it was best to keep your thoughts within your own head. Vidan, long ingrained in the silence of complete propriety, merely bowed, before the two Crafters turned towards their own quarters.

Kat and Fani carried on together into the bowels of the Hold. Fani walked with the smooth, elegant gait of a well-bred lady, her skirts rustling gently as she glided across the floor, but Kat took advantage of her father's absence to hitch her own sea-blue dress out of the way of her feet and to stride like a man. She had vague memories of being allowed to dress in boy's breeches when she was very young, and to play around the stables and yard, getting under everyone's feet, but now she thought that she must have imagined that time. She couldn't believe that her cold, severe father had ever allowed her to be free of the restraints of her skirt.

As they rounded a corner, they came across a drudge filling the glowbaskets on the walls. Kat instinctively dropped her skirts so that they brushed against the ground again, and moderated her step so that she didn't step on the heavy material dragging across the flagstones in front of her. Fani didn't react at all to her sudden change of pace; both the ladies of Lemos knew that it was better to be cautious, to preserve appearances at all times, no matter how insignificant or innocent the observer might seem.

Neither relaxed until they reached the door of their own suite of rooms. Of all the cold and empty halls of the Hold, the inmost rooms, deep inside the rock face, were the ones that Kat disliked least. She had hated them as a child made to sleep there alone – they had been huge and shadowy and echoing to her five-year-old imagination, and she had been unable to sleep because of the terrors that came in the night – but after Fani had married Galen and come to Lemos things had improved. Kat's young stepmother was gentle and yielding, but she had a core of good sense, and she had firmly shut up most of the suite, designed to house the ten or fifteen ladies in the train of most Lord Holders, and moved some softer, more comfortable furnishings into the rooms that she and Kat did use.

Fani hurried ahead of Kat into the rooms, and passed on through the warm and welcoming sitting room to Egan's nursery which lay beyond. Soon Kat could hear the rise and fall of her stepmother's voice as she spoke to Berna, Egan's nurse, and presently both women came back into the main room, and Berna gave Kat a little curtsey. 'Lady Katriel.'

Kat was standing very upright in the centre of the room, lips pressed tightly together, waiting for the woman to leave. She inclined her head slightly to the nurse, acknowledging her.

'You may go, Berna,' said Fani, gently, and the nurse curtsied once more and hurried out into the corridor, closing the door behind her. Kat, finally dropping her haughty demeanour entirely, kicked out at a cushion lying loose on the floor, scowling.

'I hate him!' She kept her bitter voice low, knowing that Egan's cries had penetrated nearly the whole Hold, and that if she was heard shouting it wouldn't matter very much whether her words were reported to her father or only the fact that she had been raising her voice in an unladylike manner. 'I really hate him! How can he do this to us? _I hope _you_ remembered my injunctions today, Katriel_. Well, yes, as it happens I did! I remember every sharding time I can't do a single thing that I want to!'

'You don't really hate him, Kat,' Fani said, gently. 'I know you're suffering, but bitterness against your father won't help matters.'

'Scorch it!' Kat rounded on her. Carrying a contented Egan, now sleeping peacefully, on her hip, Fani was glowingly beautiful. She also looked far too young to be a wife and mother. 'And I don't know how you can be so sharding patient all the time!'

'Ssh, Kat, sit down. You'll wake Egan.'

Kat scowled and flounced angrily to a chair by the fireside, where she pulled her feet up and rested her chin on her knees in a posture that Galen would certainly have denounced as inappropriate for a young lady of her age and station, ignoring the discomfort of hard stone that couldn't be disguised even by drapes and cushions. Her anger gave way temporarily to curiosity. 'How _do_ you stand it, Fani? I mean, I can't see _any_ reason why you should have married him. And then there's Egan – I mean, _how_?'

'Kat!' Shocked and embarrassed, Fani blushed, her ivory skin stained pink, clashing with the deep wine-red colour of her dress.

'Sorry!' Kat reddened too, although she doubted that it looked as attractive on her as it did on Fani. She had her father's slightly brown, coarse skin, and she couldn't make herself believe that her hair was anything other than sand-coloured. 'I meant…'

Egan shifted and grizzled slightly, and Fani rocked him gently, soothing him as she recovered her own composure. 'It's all right. I know what you meant. And in answer to your question – Galen wasn't always like he is now, Kat.'

Kat scowled again. She was always being told that. But what use was it to her? Here she was, fifteen turns old and trapped in this airless inner room without even a window to open and let the air in, without even a window that she could look out of and gaze up at the stars and dream of being free of the restraints of propriety and of her father's suffocating discipline.

'I _know_,' she said, impatiently. 'When my mother was here.'

Fani shrugged sympathetically. 'I didn't know him then. But even when I first met him, Kat, he was – he was cold, he was cautious, he was in some ways a wounded man, but he was still human.'

Kat knew where her stepmother was going with this line of thought. 'Arrin.'

Fani nodded, rocking Egan in her arms and gazing into the fire. 'I liked Arrin, Kat, don't get me wrong –'

'Like!' Kat interrupted, forcefully. 'He isn't dead!'

'That's true. I like Arrin, and I understood his frustration and his restlessness, Kat, as I do yours, but when Arrin left too, that was what finished your father. I do think that Galen has been badly treated by the world, Kat. I think… if I was him I would feel as though everything that I had ever loved had walked away from me.'

'That's not true!' said Kat, fiercely. 'He drove Arrin away! Himself! His fault. I'd go, if I could get away with it. If I'd been old enough when Arrin left, I would've.'

'Right. And somewhere, Galen must know that too. Your mother hurt him, so he cut himself off from you, and from Arrin, and so he caused that second great hurt to himself.'

'It was all her fault,' Kat said, jealously. 'Why did she have to go away? Didn't she love us enough?'

'It's a very great thing, to be Searched to a dragonweyr,' Fani said, gently. 'Perhaps she was overwhelmed by it. She was very young, you know, younger than I am now. She married your father young, and you were only a babe in arms.'

'All the more reason not to leave me!' Kat clenched her fists. 'She was older than I am, Fani, and I know if I was happy and had a loving family and a little baby I wouldn't leave them for any reason!'

Fani didn't say anything. She rested her cheek on her own son's soft head and felt the warm weight of him in her arms, like a small animal. She could find no answer to Kat's assertion. She herself couldn't comprehend the reasoning that might have led to Galen's first wife's abandonment of her husband and child.

'And if she hadn't,' said Kat, angrily, 'then everything would be all right. We'd be happy here. Father would be kind, and I'd be allowed to go out and ride and… I'd have brothers fostered so there'd be other people my age in this whole vast mausoleum, and everything would be fine!'

She paused, as if waiting for Fani to find some more arguments in her mother's defense so that she could continue to get angry and tear them down, and when Fani made no response she snorted. 'I'm going to bed.'

'Sleep well.'

Kat scowled and flung herself out through the archway that led to both her and Fani's rooms as well as to Egan's nursery.

Kat was still thinking of her mother as she lay in bed, frowning into the dark with immense sadness as she listened to Fani pacing backwards and forwards and singing quietly to a fretful Egan in the next room.

The younger Kat had grown up in a Hold full of her mother's ghost, or so it had seemed to the girl. She didn't even know if Calantha was truly dead, or if she was living as a goldrider at Benden Weyr. Living happily, forgetting that I exist, Kat thought, bitterly. She tried to piece together in her own mind what little she _did_ know about her mother.

Arrin had told her the most. He was her father's brother, although he had seemed to Kat more of an elder brother than an uncle, for he had been some turns Galen's junior, almost as close in age to Kat as to her forbidding father. As a child Kat had followed him around constantly, especially before Fani came, delighting in Arrin's sense of fun and his outgoing chatter and kindness. Arrin had been the first person to tell her that her father had once been different. 'He wasn't always like this,' Arrin had told the girl, when she cried because her father had been cross with her for soiling her dress or for bothering the stablemen about their duties. He had used the phrase like a talisman for the child. 'He wasn't always like this.'

Kat hadn't realised then that it had been to reassure himself as much as her. While Galen had had no wife and no son, Arrin had been the obvious potential heir to Lemos' Lordship, and Galen's insistence on the responsibilities and ceremony of the close family of a Lord Holder had borne down heavily on the naturally light-hearted young man. Kat remembered well hiding herself under a table in the hall, wide-eyed and holding back tears as Galen and Arrin had shouted at one another. Later she had been too old for such retreat, and she and Fani had looked on aghast as the brothers fought. For years Arrin had kept himself from despair with the idea that Galen hadn't always been this way – and might not be this way forever.

Until he had stopped hoping. One night he had slipped into ten-year-old Kat's room just as the girl was on the brink of sleep. 'I'm going away,' he'd said. 'I can't stand it any more, Kat.'

Even then the girl had blamed her misfortune on her mysterious mother's departure. She'd got as much of the tale as she could from people who were willing to tell, but even that just gave her tantalising and fragmented hints. 'She was a good fun – a wild one,' Arrin had told her. 'That's why he wants you to be so prim and proper, I think, Kat. He doesn't want you to grow up like her.'

'She was good-looking, all right,' fussy old Palla, the head cook, had told her. 'Now get out of my way, Lady Kat, I've a lot to do.'

'She did wrong by this Hold,' tall, gaunt Berna said, glumly. 'Ah, Lord Galen should have known what comes of an imprudent marriage.'

'They were so much in love,' sighed Shona, the flabby middle-aged woman who had been employed to teach Kat the basics of spinning, weaving and embroidery. 'But I shouldn't talk about it, Lady Katriel, the Lord wouldn't like it.'

That was how every conversation about her mother ended. _Your father doesn't like it talked about_. It seemed to Kat that her father was determined to pretend that Calantha had never existed at all.

If only that would extend to pretending I don't exist, she thought bitterly, rolling over and pulling the blankets more tightly around herself. I get the worst of both worlds – being stuck with all the propriety and restraint he expects of his daughter, without him ever once looking me in the face. I wish I could get out of here!

The absolute blackness of the room seemed to contract around Kat, forcing the air from her lungs. She shut her eyes and forced herself to breathe regularly… in… out. It didn't really help. Even when she pulled her body back under control, there still seemed to be an echo reverberating round the room and through her head. _Trapped… trapped… trapped_…


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Hi guys... not much to say this time, so on with the story!**

Hideth was flying strongly, and J'mat took advantage of a thread-free patch of air to pat his dragon's deep brown hide._ We're doing good!_

_You are indeed, youngling_. Hideth relayed the voice of his wingleader's dragon to his rider, and J'mat grinned with pleasure, teeth flashing in his tanned brown face.

_Here comes some more thread, Hideth. Ready?_

He heard his dragon's mental acknowledgement, and Hideth turned his head to receive another lump of firestone that J'mat fed into his jaws, chewing it thoroughly. It was their first full length Fall and J'mat was desperate to impress his new wingleader. _Get it, Hideth!_

_All in good time_. The brown waited calmly until the patch of thread they had targeted was close enough to them before opening his jaws to breathe out the scorching cloud of flame that charred the thread into grey ash. Then he flicked a mental warning at J'mat before rolling over in the air to avoid flying through the fragments of hot ash, righting himself in a position a dragonlength to the left of where he had been, his rider clinging to his back. Out of the corner of his eye J'mat saw green Marith, a dragonlength below and behind, correcting her course to the right to fill the space that he and Hideth had left and mopping up the fragments of thread that had escaped their flame.

He didn't have time to watch the wing's well-disciplined teamwork. They were entering another thick patch of thread, and Hideth was angling upwards in response to his wingleader's command. _Fidranth will take this patch and Garth and Jeth sweep alongside, but we are to keep any stray threads from falling on them_, he told his rider, sweeping his gaze across the sky as he tried to pick out which strands among the ominous grey rain hissing out of the sky were a threat to his wingmates. J'mat let Hideth keep track of that, himself scanning the skies above and to the sides of them. The top position in the formation was the most dangerous, leaving the rider and dragon that occupied it more exposed to thread than when buried among their wingmates.

J'mat felt a breath of wind on his face, and winced as thread that had been falling straight down where a higher wing would have dealt with it was dragged off course and spiralled towards him. _Hideth?_

_Hold your breath_, the brown responded. J'mat glanced around, noting the positions of other dragons in the sky, then Hideth whisked them out of the thread's path into the freezing emptiness of _between_.

It was always shocking to feel one's breath snatched away as one was plunged into a silent and bone-chilling void, but J'mat prided himself that he was no wherry-headed weyrling to let it put him off. He counted silently _one…two…three…_ and Hideth burst out into the grey skies of Pern again, placed perfectly half a dragonlength behind the offending thread. Almost lazily, the brown dragon exhaled and flamed it to cinders.

Compared to the iciness of _between_, Lemos' autumnal air seemed mild, even as it roared into J'mat's face as Hideth beat his wings strongly to pull himself up over the ash cloud and regain his place in their formation. The thicker patch of thread had been dealt with and the wing had returned to flying in a loose wedge formation, giving J'mat and Hideth the much more sheltered position half-way out from the centre on the left wing.

Not that it gave them licence to relax. J'mat tensed up as another gust of wind blew a patch of undulating silvery threads straight across the face of their wing.

_Kaith has it_, Hideth informed him before J'mat could issue any orders, and altered course smoothly to give the experienced blue a clear sight of the thread patch, himself targeting a smaller patch that looked as though it might slip through the wing and fall with deadly intent towards the productive green fields below. _More firestone, please_.

_Here_. J'mat reached for his sack, and realised that it was almost empty. _Shards!_ he cursed. _That's a weyrling's mistake! I should've known I'd need more if we were going to ride more than half a Fall. Here, Hideth, have what there is, and bespeak a weyrling to see if we can get some more in a hurry_. He dragged out the last couple of pieces of sharp-smelling stone, and held onto them patiently as Hideth rolled and dodged again, looking for a clear piece of sky where he could relax his vigilance for a second as he turned his head round to accept the firestone from his rider's hand.

'J'mat!' The voice came from above him, and he looked up to see a pair of green dragons flying in tandem. One of the pair dropped down towards him, flaming a couple of stray threads as she did so, and her rider leaned over to speak to the young brownrider. It was F'san, whom J'mat had realised that it would be a good idea to respect almost as soon as he was assigned to the wing, despite the older dragon's lesser colour. He and Marith were old and experienced, and bad dragonriders didn't get old.

'I'm swapping out with H'don and Fineth to give Marith a break.' F'san patted his dragon's hide affectionately, but J'mat could see that the colour of her hide was faded, and that there were exhaustion lines creased across her rider's face. 'You can have what stone I've got left to tide you over until a weyrling can get here. Catch!' He lifted half a sack of firestone, the top carefully rolled over and secured and tossed it accurately into the younger man's arms. It thumped against J'mat's chest, and he grasped it gratefully.

'Thanks, F'san! I can't think how I came to…'

The experienced rider brushed aside his gratitude. 'Everyone does it once. Stick to it, lad – you're flying well, but don't let your guard down.' He raised a hand in salute to the young brownrider, and then all at once he and Marith disappeared, back to the safety of Benden Weyr.

_Right, c'mon Hideth_, J'mat said, with renewed determination. He could feel Hideth greeting Fineth, his new neighbour in the formation, as they flew into another patch of thread. Then, without warning, the brown flipped himself over on a wingtip. J'mat clung to his riding straps, pain scorching through the link he shared with the young brown. _Hideth! Hideth, what's wrong? How badly are you hurt?_ He looked out over his dragon's wing, where he sensed the lancing pain and saw a couple of long strands of thread just burrowing into the sensitive membranes at Hideth's wingtip. _It's not serious, Hideth. Into _between_ for a second!_

The dragon obeyed him, and J'mat was suddenly bereft of all his senses again. _Now back_.

Hideth exploded back out into the air, and J'mat looked back over his injured wing, relieved to see that the thread was grey and crumbling away. But before he'd had time to make more than a cursory inspection, Hideth was diving and rolling again, weaving an erratic course through a sky that had suddenly become treacherous. J'mat cursed as he ducked his head and hung on, trusting to his dragon's instinct and reactions to keep them out of trouble. They'd emerged from _between_ practically inside a clump of thread! He hadn't looked around them to find and visualise a safe re-entry point, that was the trouble. Another stupid mistake! Any more and he'd be dead.

_My fault_, Hideth said, contritely, as they emerged from the thread patch. The brown had very sensibly not tried to flame any of the hissing grey serpents himself, leaving them for the queens' wing below to mop up. Now the rest of the wing swept up around J'mat and his brown, the wingleader D'lin bringing his bronze Fidranth alongside the young pair. _Fidranth's rider wishes to know how badly we are hurt_, Hideth informed his rider.

_We're all right, aren't we? Tell him we can carry on. No problem_.

J'mat twisted his head around to see D'lin raise an arm in acknowledgement of his message, and then Fidranth surged forwards, obviously in obedience to a mental command, back to his key position in the centre of the front row.

_Better get back to our position, Hideth_. J'mat glanced around him, but the sky was full of dragons, blocking his movement. _We'll go _between. He looked up at the gap in the wing's formation where Fineth and Kaith were drifting apart to make a space for him, and brought it firmly to the front of his mind. _Ready?_

As Hideth jumped out of _between_, J'mat grinned, patting the brown's hide. _Perfect!_ And it was perfect, he thought, giving Hideth another lump of firestone to chew, and clinging on as the brown made a long, shallow dive towards another patch of thread, flaming it until the light flecks of grey ash were swept away by the breeze. _This_ was perfect – being a rider, soaring far above Pern to combat this insidious menace. His heart rose with a sudden leap as Hideth ducked back to allow Kaith to flame another patch of thread, and then soared in above the blue dragon to clear a clump that was falling with deadly intent towards the older dragon's back. Kaith's rider B'rallin raised a hand in thanks, and J'mat smiled again, glancing downwards. They were passing almost directly over Lemos Hold now, and he could make out the vague shuttered shapes of windows in the cliff face. _I bet they're glad we're here_, he remarked to Hideth.

The dragon merely grunted acknowledgement, most of his attention taken up with maintaining his place in the formation and keeping in touch with his neighbouring dragons to ensure that as little as possible of the thread fell though their cover towards the queen's wing below. J'mat was infected by the dragon's sense of purpose and turned back to scanning the skies for possible dangers, but even as he did so he couldn't help a little happy excitement bubbling up inside of him. Despite the dangers, it was sharding good to ride free with a dragon like Hideth and wingmates like his, searing Pern's ancient enemy from the sky!

* * *

Katriel, trapped in the depths of a Hold shuttered and barred against threadfall, paced restlessly backwards and forwards across the cavernous room. She didn't know where Fani was, and she felt isolated and alone.

She was always confined to the ladies' quarters during threadfall. This was to 'keep her out of the way' according to her father, but Katriel thought that excuse was so much dragon dung. It wasn't as if roaming the main Hold would bring her into contact with the ground crews, who were already out following behind the threadfall's leading edge. She thought that her father's real fear was that she might meet a dragonrider. Although Faranth alone knew how she was supposed to manage that from behind Lemos Hold's mighty bronze shutters and barred door! It was as if he thought that even a distant glance of a flight of dragons might cause her to vanish away to a Weyr.

Which it might, she acknowledged to herself. So it looks like locking me up in here might be a smart move on his part. But scorch him! What gives him the right? Aside from being my father. I'm almost of age. And if I _do_ want to leave, whose fault is that?

Forget it, she scolded herself. The Weyr wouldn't want me anyway. They don't just take in girls running away from home. And I'm not sure if I want to go there anyway! If they'd never Searched my mother then _none_ of this mess would ever have happened!

She kicked a cushion viciously across the room, then swore and grabbed it back out as it landed in the fireplace. She dropped it burning side down onto the flagstones of the floor and pressed it against the cold stone until the flames went out, then picked it up, scowling and wrinkling her nose against the smell of burnt material.

She looked at the blackened material glumly. It had been a very fine weave from Ruatha in Fani's favourite deep red, and she knew her stepmother wouldn't be happy that Kat had destroyed it. Most of the stuffing had survived, and the cushion could be recovered, but they would likely never be able to find the material to match it to the rest of the set.

What am I going to tell her? Kat thought, guiltily, and then abruptly, Oh, scorch it, who cares! It's only a sharding cushion! She dropped it onto the floor, leaving a smear of black ash across her hands and marched out of the room, tearing the hide curtain out of her way. Fani was out in the Hold somewhere. Why shouldn't she be?

She hadn't even made it down one corridor before her nerves began to overwhelm her anger.

I'm going to get caught, she thought anxiously. Maybe I should go back.

She glanced back at the doorway to the ladies' quarters. She _had_ pulled the hide hanging away from its fixings, she saw. The corner was flapping loose.

I could probably fix that in about half an hour, she thought. And get cleared up inside. That way Fani won't be – well, she won't be _too_ upset – and Father won't be angry…

No! She recaptured some of her anger. They weren't lacking in marks and servants, so why should she have to repair things? And she had a perfect right to be out of the ladies' quarters – yes, and even to destroy things if she wanted to!

The Hold seemed empty. Of course, this deep inside the rock face it often was, so Kat wasn't too worried until she started to reach the Holder's areas. Despite Galen's distance from his people, he was always deeply influenced by tradition, so nearly all the people of Lemos who didn't farm outlying Holds lived within the main Hold itself. Of course, the men were all out on duty as ground crews – but where had the women gone? Even the Holder children seemed to have vanished.

Something's going on that I don't know about, she realised. Fani must be there too – wherever everyone is. How could she do that to me? Unless… no, there's nothing she could want to surprise me with. She scowled at the wall. Even Fani is part of this whole sharding secretive, hidden place now. Scorch it, even I am!

'Er… Lady Katriel?'

The quiet, diffident voice behind her startled Kat, but she managed not to jump, and wiped the scowl off her face as she turned to face the speaker with a carefully blank expression. 'Yes, Journeyman Tercel?'

The young Harper managed to look as though he felt hurt by her distant tone. His engaging smile faltered, and he ran a hand through already tousled blond hair.

'I was just wondering whether you're all right, my lady?' His voice was boyish and hesitant, and Kat suddenly realised that he couldn't be much older than she was.

Poor boy, she thought, thrust into this as his first posting! She began to smile at him, and then met his eyes, and saw with a shock her own thoughts reflected there. Poor girl, Tercel was thinking, stuck in this!

Pride stiffened Kat's spine instantly. 'Thank you,' she said, grandly. 'I am quite well, I assure you. Perhaps you yourself need some directions, being new to the Hold?'

'No, I thank you, my lady,' Tercel said. He knew a dismissal when he heard one, although Kat thought he sounded a little sad. The Harper Journeyman bowed elegantly and walked on down the corridor, leaving Kat alone.

She listened to the slight echo of his footsteps as they receded down the corridor. I wonder where he's going? she thought. Could I have handled that differently? No, Father would never let me make friends with a Harper. And I won't have him pity me! I am the only daughter of the Lord Holder of Lemos, after all!

But still… I could at least ask him if he knows where everyone is, can't I? No harm in that.

Kat hitched up her skirts and followed Tercel down the corridor, trotting a little to catch up.

Because she was hurrying, she didn't hear the low voices ahead of her until she hurried around a corner and stopped sharply. Her father was standing in the hallway with Olman, who was his chief agent, the man who carried out Galen's instructions and helped to manage Lemos' extensive lands. They had obviously stopped because they had encountered the young Harper in the corridor; and now all three men were turning to look at her.

Kat barely saw Olman's blank look and Tercel's half-surprised, half-hopeful gaze. She was concentrating on her father's face as he lifted his heavy, dark eyebrows.

'Katriel, what are you doing here?'

Galen's voice was quiet but steely, and Kat could feel it draining away all of her angry resolve. Why shouldn't I be here? she wanted to answer, but found herself instead mumbling, 'Nothing, father.'

'Then return immediately to where you ought to be. Now, Olman, about the storage of the late harvest –' Galen turned away, forcing his agent to follow him down the corridor. Tercel hesitated for a second, glancing at Kat, but the girl glared at him so he turned away and followed the other two men.

He didn't even bother to see whether I did what he said, Kat thought bitterly. That's what I hate about him. He doesn't even see that I might disobey him. And curse him, he's right!

She turned around and began walking back towards the ladies' inner rooms, her steps small and neat beneath the rustle of her skirt and her back ramrod straight.

* * *

When Fani returned Kat was asleep on her bed, cheeks flushed with crying. Her stepmother shook her shoulder gently and Kat woke, disoriented.

'Kat, where have you been? I expected you all afternoon!'

Kat blinked. 'What? Expected me where?'

'In the kitchens.' Fani shook her head at Kat's blank look. 'You must remember. We're clear of thread now for two sevendays, so it's time for the autumn gather.'

Kat sat bolt upright, narrowly missing knocking her skull against her pretty stepmother's. 'The autumn _gather_! I forgot! When does it start, Fani?'

'Four days. I had to see Halina today about organising food for the event and lodgings for traders and those coming in from the outlying Holds. I expected you to come and help.'

'Oh, I am sorry, Fani,' said Kat, contritely. She hugged her stepmother. 'I would rather have been with you than shut up in here, honestly.'

Fani smiled. 'Yes, I know you would. Still, at least in here you can't have got into any trouble.'

Kat winced. 'Er… Fani, I need to tell you something about one of your cushions…'

* * *

J'mat stepped out into the silver moonlit night, and felt the shock of cold air hitting him do something to counteract his post-Fall exhaustion and the effect of the rather good wine they'd had with dinner.

_Come and pick me up, Hideth?_ he asked.

The young brown, slumbering contentedly, grumbled deep in his belly, but heaved himself up. J'mat grinned and looked up at the sky, revelling in the crystalline perfection of the clear, cold stars. It was the wrong time of night to see the Red Star, and without it the sky looked both beautiful and benign.

The young rider's head snapped round as he saw a movement in the darkness, and his hand went to his belt knife, then relaxed as the newcomer chuckled. 'Not that drunk, then, lad?'

'No, sir.' J'mat recognised his wingleader's voice.

'How's Hideth's wing doing?'

'The Healer's put a dressing on it, but he says it's nothing to worry about. We're still fit to fly, sir.'

'Good,' said D'lin, crisply. 'Then I want the pair of you ready to go out again in a few days. We're flying Search, and I'm taking you out to find whether Hideth's got the nose for it.'

'Yes, sir!' J'mat grinned. While he didn't especially want to be tied down into Searching for the rest of his life, it would be fun to get away from the Weyr and partake of the hospitality of the Holders. 'Where are we going?'

'I've taken Lemos.' D'lin told him. 'That means the main Hold, but also the smaller Holds of that Lordship. We're looking for both boys and girls.' He paused and then added. 'You've an interest in this clutch anyway, I hear?'

'Well – sort of, sir. My brother's standing. Jasor.'

'He's younger than you?'

'Yes, sir, three years.'

J'mat couldn't see the bronzerider's face in the darkness, but he could hear the smile in the man's voice. 'Well, I can see I'll have to watch him, if he Impresses. If he flies anything like his brother then I'll be wanting him in my wing.'

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Just a note about the punctuation I've chosen to adopt for the Gather; I've decided that it's 'a gather' but 'the Lemos Autumn Gather' and therefore ' the Gather'. This is why I sometimes capitalise the word and sometimes don't. (I hope I managed to stick to this rule...)**

**Apologies about the long wait between updates. I've been unwell (chickenpox, at my age! I ask you!) and I've felt much to tired and dull to write for some time. But it's here now!**

* * *

_Fidranth says we must keep formation and discipline tight, both flying and on the ground_, Hideth relayed. _We need to impress the Holders_.

_Tell him we understand_, J'mat said. They were circling up over Benden Weyr preparatory to making the jump _between_ to Lemos. The brownrider grinned. He was excited about the trip, and it was a good time of day to be up and on dragonback, the bright crisp dawn before the rest of the Weyr was awake.

_We must follow Fidranth in formation_.

J'mat nodded. _Get ready to go _between,_ then. Have you got the co-ordinates from Fidranth?_

_I have them. Here we go_.

Hideth whipped them _between_, and the blackness swallowed the bright dawn sky and all the breath from J'mat's lungs. He clutched instinctively tighter with his knees as the feeling of Hideth's hide against his legs vanished, and then they burst out into another fresh autumn morning.

Here it was a few hours later, and people were up and about. In fact – carefully keeping his position relative to the other dragons of the wing, J'mat leant over to see – there were a _lot_ of people about.

'We've struck lucky,' D'lin called over his shoulder. 'Looks like there's a gather on! Everyone who's anyone will be here today!'

* * *

Kat stood demurely with Fani, half a pace behind her father's right shoulder, as Lord Galen greeted the guests. She didn't know what they made of his forbidding welcome; but not one of the Holders or traders arriving would have missed the Lemos Autumn Gather, even if a dragon stood in their way. The three days of feasting, trading and dancing were as much a time for celebrating the end of the harvest season as an opportunity to buy and sell the necessaries to last out the winter. It was their biggest gather of the year, and despite Galen's strict restrictions, he couldn't stamp out the noisy, colourful, exuberant atmosphere. Besides, the Autumn Gather was traditional. His father had held it, and _his_ father before him.

Kat had heard that her father had met her mother at the Autumn Gather. Certainly it was famous as a time when betrothals were made or announced. And in the excited chaos, among all the hordes of strangers, all in their best clothes, it was possible for a girl to slip away among the crowds and pretend that she was one of them, if she was careful…

Kat kept her face blank and her hands quietly folded, but under the floor-sweeping skirts of her best dress no one could tell if one foot was tapping along with the fast, swirling rhythm of the dancing music she could hear in the distance. The autumn gather was her favourite time of year.

She smiled slightly as she caught the flash of harper blue moving through the crowd towards them. The Harper Hall always sent a contingent to back up the Hold's own harper for the autumn gather. Kat surreptitiously stretched her neck out to look around her father's tall figure and inspect the group. They were led by a tall man, with grey hair and a straight nose, then two men behind him wearing journeyman's shoulderknots – one young and confident looking, the other mild and middle-aged, with red hair fading to grey in patches. At the back, puffing a little as he tried to keep up, ran a round-faced boy. An apprentice, Kat assumed.

'Lord Galen.' When he reached them, the commanding grey-haired man inclined his head slightly to the Lord Holder, and Kat suddenly realised, He's really important!

Her father confirmed it, thin lipped. 'Master Mordan. An honour to see you.' He made it sound as though it was the opposite. He _is_ important, Kat thought, gasping internally. That's the Masterharper! What's he doing here?

'Likewise.' The Harper's voice was as dry as Galen's. 'And Journeymen Imbel and Fangor, and apprentice Dannen.'

Galen looked over the junior harpers, not even bothering to give them a nod. 'Indeed. Journeyman Tercel will show –'

Somewhere in the crowd, someone screamed. All their heads turned.

A small flight of dragons, led by a magnificent bronze, had just appeared overhead and were circling lazily down towards an empty field just outside the gates.

Kat was the only one who saw her father's hands clench into fists so hard that his knuckles went white. 'Katriel,' he snapped. 'You will show the harpers to their rooms.'

'But –!' she protested, shocked.

'Katriel!' Her father looked at her, and Kat stepped away from his furious gaze.

'Yes, father.' She pressed her lips together and led the Masterharper and his juniors away into the Hold.

* * *

Tercel exchanged civilities with his fellow journeymen as they followed Master Mordan's stately figure and Katriel's skinny one, but he didn't say anything of importance until Katriel had shown them to the suite of rooms assigned to the visiting Harpers and flounced away, her nose in the air.

Master Mordan looked sadly after the fair-haired girl. 'A very troubled child, I think.'

Then he turned round to his subordinate. 'Tercel, report.'

'Well, in terms of the ordinary business of the Hold, nothing's amiss,' Tercel said, cautiously. 'The children seem to know their teaching songs fairly well; Lord Galen's a stickler for propriety…'

The Masterharper fixed him with a glare. 'I wasn't asking about the ordinary business of the Hold, as you know very well.'

'Yes, sir.' Tercel swallowed. 'Sir, I'm not getting anywhere!'

Mordan sighed and sat down on one of the beds, running a hand through his white hair. 'Don't worry too much. You've only been here two sevendays. I've been getting nowhere with Lord Galen for the better part of fifteen turns. Less than nowhere for the last five of them.'

'That's since Arrin left, right?' Tercel asked. 'But people here talk about that as if it were the last straw, not the whole problem. Sir, I know you wanted me not to know what happened here so as to start without any pre-conceived ideas, but I don't think I'm ever going to find out by myself. It's something to do with Lord Galen's first wife, isn't it? Did she die?'

'No,' Master Mordan said, heavily. He looked round at the other two journeymen, and said, 'You'd better hear this too, and pass the word to the others. But be discreet! The Lemos Autumn Gather is a time when a very artificially restrained Hold breaks loose, and things can get very… intense. You're all going to need to be prepared.' He paused, looking sternly around to be sure that he had all their attention, and said, 'The Lady Calantha was Searched to Benden Weyr a little more than fourteen years ago.'

There was a pause, and then Imbel, the youngest of the journeymen, frowned. 'I don't understand,' he said, in a light, warm tenor. 'She was a Lord Holder's wife. Doesn't that entitle her to refuse?'

'And -' Tercel had been doing rapid calculations '- Katriel can't have been more than a year old, either. No Weyr takes a mother away from her child.' A thought struck him, and he looked up at the Masterharper. 'Unless she wanted to go. Was that the problem - that she wanted to go?'

'No.' Master Mordan sighed again, and when he spoke his voice was tight with restraint. 'None of you will remember I'den, and you're blessed.' Tercel saw the Masterharper's hands clenching into fists as he carried on, forcefully quietly. 'I have never met a man so arrogant, so self-righteous and so demanding. You've heard of the famines twelve, thirteen turns back, when Benden Weyr was criticised so bitterly for tithing heavily from Holds who hadn't anything left for themselves. I'den was behind that; the old Weyrleader hadn't the strength to stop him. And it was I'den who came Searching here at Lemos. He wanted the honour of being the man who found the new queenrider - he believed, I don't know if it's true or not, that it would give him a better chance when the young queen came to rise to mate - and he told Lady Calantha that she had no choice but to go with him.'

'And she believed him?' Tercel asked, horrified.

Mordan smiled sadly. 'Calantha was a young lady of both courage and spirit, but I'den undermined her certainty enough that she didn't really resist when he took her away.'

'He _kidnapped_ the wife of a Lord Holder?' Imbel gasped. He exchanged looks with Tercel, who had never liked the dark and arrogant young man, but found himself suddenly warming to Imbel now.

'More or less. It was very badly done. The thing is, once Calantha had Impressed she certainly couldn't go home, so I'den was allowed to get away with it.'

'And Lady Calantha? Is she still at Benden Weyr now?'

'She died only a couple of years subsequently. But I don't know if Lord Galen even knows that much.'

'And Katriel?' Tercel frowned. 'How much does she know?'

'I don't know, of course, what she may have picked up here and there,' the Masterharper said, cautiously, 'She had to remain behind when Calantha left; at the time she was Lord Galen's only child. But Lord Galen doesn't permit his first wife's name to be mentioned in the Hold, so I would guess - very little.' He fixed the fair-haired journeyman with a gaze down his imperious nose. 'Of course, it is a part of your assignment to see what we can do for Katriel.'

'I'm trying, sir!' Tercel protested defensively. 'But I just can't seem to get through to her.'

'Ah?' Mordan asked, lightly. 'You're a personable young man, Tercel.'

The journeyman reddened. 'Yes, sir. But she's just so reserved!'

Mordan frowned, running a hand through his hair again. 'That's not what I'd've expected in Calantha's daughter.'

'She's Lord Galen's daughter too.'

'Indeed.' Master Mordan pondered for a minute, and then asked, 'What about Lady Fani? Can she help us to heal what is broken here?'

'I don't think so,' Tercel said, regretfully. 'I mean, I like her, she's a real lady - but I don't think she's got… she's just quiet and placid, and I'm not at all sure that there's anything underneath.'

'Then it would seem -' The Masterharper broke off, stiffening up. 'Shards! Didn't I just see dragons arriving?'

'Yes, sir,' Imbel answered him, puzzled. 'What - ?'

Already half way out of the door, Master Mordan flung back, 'Think how they must feel about dragonriders! I've got to speak to that bronzerider!'

* * *

_Something's wrong here_, J'mat said nervously to Hideth. He inched half a step closer to F'san on his right as they followed D'lin towards where the Lord Holder was welcoming people. As they passed, conversations faltered, and people turned to look at them with hostile eyes. Beyond them J'mat could hear music and laughter, but wherever they went the atmosphere seemed to be as warm as a winter midnight.

_Fidranth's rider thinks so too_, Hideth told him. _He reminds us that our behaviour must be impeccable. Betray no emotion_.

Behind Lord Galen, the three senior retainers in the Lord's party looked horrified, hovering between anger and fear. Only the pretty dark-haired woman seemed calm and at ease.

_How can she not notice all this?_ J'mat wondered incredulously. _Is she simple? No, she can't be, she must be Lord Galen's wife_.

_She is not_, Hideth confirmed. _She is as worried as the rest. She just hides it better. But the Lord - he is all closed up in his head. I cannot read him at all_.

J'mat looked at Lord Galen and shivered. The man's face might be impenetrable and his eyes opaque, but the young brownrider fancied he could feel the fury emanating off him.

'Lord Galen,' said D'lin, respectfully.

'Bronzerider,' Lord Galen answered, his lips barely opening, and the poisonous iciness of the single word made J'mat swallow and look up at his Wingleader with bated breath.

D'lin looked taken aback, but managed to continue. 'D'lin, Fidranth's rider, of Benden Weyr. My duty to your lady.'

'My wife, the Lady Fani,' Lord Galen answered, correctly, indicating the dark-haired beauty behind him, but stepped in between them almost before D'lin had a chance to bow to the Lady, the atmosphere tightening along with all the hard lines of his face. 'What brings you here?'

The blatant disrespect of the Lord's attitude made J'mat blink, but D'lin answered, 'I had hoped to ask for Lemos' hospitality for a few days; we're riding -'

'Search.' Lord Galen completed his sentence for him, biting the word off with a bitter finality. 'You may not Search here, bronzerider. Return to your Weyr at once.'

Entirely forgetting the order to betray no emotion, J'mat gasped, his mouth dropping open, and even D'lin blinked, mentally reeling, before pulling himself together enough to say firmly, 'I believe that I have that right.'

Lord Galen's lips pressed together so hard that they went white, and J'mat watched in horrible fascination. _Is he really going to defy us? Is he really prepared to risk his position as Lord Holder?_

Apparently not. Lord Galen snapped, 'You have the three days of this Gather. No more.'

When not taken by surprise, D'lin was tough. He met the formidable Lord Holder's eyes squarely and said, 'The Search will take as long as it takes.'

Their eyes locked fiercely, and it was D'lin who broke away first. He bowed slightly to Lady Fani, then turned and strode away into the crowd, the rest of the wing following. J'mat, staring at the Lord Holder who'd made D'lin back down, who seemed to hate them so much, was left there with his mouth hanging open until F'san took pity on him and tugged his arm, reminding him to walk away with the rest of the dragonriders.

_So what in Faranth's name was all that about?_

Katriel dropped the hide curtain behind her very, very slowly, glaring furiously into the distance. Her breathing was fast and ragged and her fists clenched. He just - how could he treat her like that? Her, his daughter! She might as well be a canine. Come here, Katriel! Go there, Katriel! Behave, Katriel! _And she did it!_

Of course I do, she thought bitterly. After all, if I didn't… She shuddered.

But she wasn't completely beaten, after all. She strode through into her own room, throwing open the lid of her clothes chest with a satisfying thud and rummaging through it looking for her oldest and plainest gown. It was still fine; but not too fine to belong to a Holder's daughter wearing her very best for the Autumn Gather. Katriel grinned fiercely as she changed. She'd been going to save an excursion until later in the day, perhaps even the next day, when there was less chance of getting caught, but scorch it! She'd been paraded and dismissed to her room. Now she was going out to have some fun!


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Thanks as always to all those special people who bothered to let me know what they thought; it means a lot to me, everyone, it really does. And kudos to Amere for spotting an old friend (particularly since he hasn't even put in an appearance so far!). Anyone see any others yet?**

* * *

They were just playing the introduction to the Lemos Gather Dance as Kat got close to the dance square, and she picked up her skirts and broke into a run to get there before the dance proper started, still a little jittery with the strain of creeping out through the silent and empty corridors of the Hold.

She hoped that she could get a partner; she hoped even more that she was early enough for this to be the first Gather Dance. The tune was old, maybe hundreds of turns old, and it'd be played endlessly through the Gather as it had every year since it was written. The steps of the dance were both intricate and difficult, and every young person of Lemos would be desperate to prove that they could manage it flawlessly. The first Lemos Gather Dance was the most special of all, and Kat had only ever been able to dance in it once. Usually she was still standing behind her father, bored stiff and listening to the distant music when the first dance was played, but once Arrin had swiped her from under her father's nose and taken her out onto the floor; the last year before he left. Galen had spoken to him afterwards about that, at his most quiet and deadly; not so much because he'd danced with Kat but because the Gather Dance involved a series of partner switches around the circle, and who knew who Kat had been passed on to at the end of the first repeat? It could have been the poorest holder. It could even have been a drudge. How shocking for Lord Galen's daughter!

Kat pushed aside the bitter thoughts as she arrived at the edge of the dance square, slightly out of breath and looked around for a partner. There must be someone, surely? A lot of couples were already out in the centre of the floor, and the Harpers, looking hot and tired already, sweat patches beginning to form on their pristine blue tunics, were nearing the end of the introduction.

'Want to dance?' offered someone, beside her.

Katriel turned, relieved. 'Yes!'

It was a boy a little older than herself, she saw - perhaps he was a trader, since he was dressed in heavy, rough clothing. It was strangely fashioned out of a thick, leathery material. Kat frowned internally, but easily kept the expression off her face. She wasn't very impressed that the boy hadn't chosen to wear finery for the occasion. That, and a slight hint of an accent to his voice made her say, 'Wait… you're not from around here, are you?'

'No. Why?'

'Do you know the steps? The Lemos Gather Dance is hard…'

'I can learn, can't I?' he asked. He sounded a little offended. Kat bit her lip. She didn't want an unskilled partner, not for the first Gather Dance; but there wasn't going to be time to explain and find someone else…

As the first chords played she grabbed his hand. 'Come on then!'

Actually, he was probably quite a decent dancer, since he wasn't nearly as bad as some. He missed a lot of the steps, of course, but he only trod on Kat's feet twice, and he managed quite creditably the simpler series of turns. When it came to the handover, though, with its fast cross-steps, he fell apart completely. Kat dodged out of the way of his blundering movements, laughed at the expression of surprise on his face as the next girl around the circle came spinning right into his arms, and found her own next partner. He was good, and she felt herself rising to the challenge; she knew she was moving faster and more lightly, letting her body respond to the touch of her new partner's guiding hand and making each step neat and precise, whirling away into the rhythm and melody of the dance.

By the time she'd made the complete circuit she was hot, flushed and breathless, but her feet were so used to the rhythm that they swung her through the steps without even thinking about it, and she felt that she couldn't make a mistake. She was delighted and thankful to find that her original partner caught her firmly as she was propelled into his arms; he _was_ good - still a bit clumsy and slow in places, but he'd got most of the dance by that time and she was able to let her feet do the moving and grin at the tense, concentrating look on her partner's face.

She was just about to relax when the Harpers slid into the finishing motif of the dance. Kat followed instinctively into the turn and glide that replaced the handover; but her partner wasn't there to catch her, and her momentum made her stumble, missing a couple of steps as she recovered her balance. Even when she pulled herself back together the boy didn't know the movements for the final bars; Kat gave up in disgust as the Harpers drew out the final chords and all around the circle pairs of dancers bowed and curtsied elegantly.

She was actually feeling quite annoyed, but was still debating what exactly to say when she happened to look at her partner's face; he looked rueful and mortified, rubbing his ear sheepishly. 'You were right. I didn't know the steps.'

Kat hovered for a moment in between irritation and amusement; but then she had to laugh. 'Oh well. I should have been here earlier.'

Recovering some of his confidence, the boy grinned. 'Come on. I'll get you something to drink.' He took her arm and piloted her gently towards a stall where the slightly sour alcoholic fumes were drawing a crowd.

Kat wavered, the caution of long habit advising her not to allow herself to be drawn into conversation or to get to know anyone. But on the other hand, he seemed a nice person, and what harm could it really do? 'Oh - just juice, thanks.'

Her partner chuckled. 'Very restrained. That's no way to behave at a gather! However, I'm glad you said that because I can now keep you company. I'm supposed to be keeping my wits about me.'

Perhaps he meant her to ask why; his way of trying to start a conversation. But Kat had been trained to never asked questions - it was unladylike - and she wasn't very good at conversation either, beyond pointless small talk. Besides, she didn't want to encourage him to ask _her_ anything. 'Indeed,' she said, vaguely. 'Did you arrive this morning?'

'Yes.' He shot her a sidelong glance, and seemed to accept her less personal conversation. 'Beautiful weather.'

Kat was jerked into laughter. 'It's the Lemos Autumn Gather! We _always_ have perfect weather!'

The boy grinned. 'Really? My experience suggests that as soon as you organise something like this it invariably starts raining. But I've not been here before. Here.' He gave the red-faced man behind the stall a quarter mark and waited for him to pour two glasses of fruit juice.

They strolled vaguely onwards through the crowd, sipping the cold, sweet drinks, and he carried on, 'Actually, it's a bit strange I've not been before. I've been to most of the bigger gathers.' He frowned. 'Although, come to think of it - maybe not that strange… This gather's three days long, right, and you have it every year?'

'That's right. It's the Lemos Autumn Gather,' Kat repeated. 'It's famous…'

'Well, probably more so if you happen to live in Lemos,' he pointed out, practically.

Kat frowned and stiffened up with the implied insult to her Hold. 'We have crafters and traders here from all over Pern! It's big enough even for some Holders from Nerat and Ruatha to have made the journey, and that's a hard road. It _is_ famous!'

'Hey, ease up!' The boy laughed. 'I'm sure it is. Uh - you know, I didn't get your name.'

'Palla,' Kat told him, easily. It was a common enough name, unlike Katriel, and she'd decided on it in advance. Courtesy made her add, 'And yours?'

'J'mat.' He grinned at her.

She frowned. 'Jemat?' It didn't sound quite like what he'd said. 'And you're… I mean…' She gestured at his rough clothing. 'You're here with your… master? parents?'

He looked surprised. 'Oh - no - with my Wingleader, actually…'

'Huh?' Kat blinked at him, automatically suppressed her surprise, remembered that she didn't have to now that she was Palla the holder girl not Katriel the Lord's emotionless and reserved daughter, and let her mouth gape open as horrified realisation came crashing in. 'It's J'mat, not Jemat! You're a dragonrider!' She could see his telltale shoulderknots now that she thought to look for them.

'I know I'm a dragonrider,' J'mat said. He sounded puzzled and faintly hurt.

Oh shards, what am I going to do now?! Kat shrieked to herself. Father is going to kill me. He's going to kill me! I've met a dragonrider! I've - hey, I've met a _dragonrider_. And father doesn't know…

They're the ones that ruined everything! They're the ones that took my mother away!

But still… a dragonrider…

She looked up and found J'mat looking at her expectantly. 'Sorry?'

'I said, are you all right?' he repeated, patiently. 'I don't understand; everyone here seems so shocked and hostile towards us. Why, Palla? I know the Weyr is - is different to a Hold, and some holders are worried by it and some people disapprove, but we're there to protect you. And Lemos; I wasn't aware that there's ever any problem with Lemos. Your ground crews are large, well trained and prompt, I know that.'

Does he really know, or is he repeating something he's heard? Kat thought. He can't be much older than me. How much responsibility can he really have? But he seems… I don't know… more mature. She laughed suddenly. More mature than who? You don't have many people to compare him to, after all!

And he was still waiting for an answer. 'The Lord - Lord Galen - he wouldn't neglect any duty,' she said, after an awkward pause trying to come up with a sufficiently neutral answer. 'He's very - determined - about doing the proper things.'

J'mat frowned. 'Just as a matter of form, though? You think he doesn't really think he needs dragonriders? But that still wouldn't explain…'

'No - I -' Kat stopped in confusion. What could she say? She could feel herself flushing; she was going to give herself away if she carried on talking about her father. But it wasn't hard to change the subject. 'Your dragon… what type is it?' She could see the answer in the knotted cord on the shoulder of his jacket, but she needed to distract him.

And she'd picked the right thing to say. J'mat's face lit up. 'A brown. His name's Hideth.'

'A brown…' Kat frowned. 'That's quite senior, right? But presumably there are a lot of brownriders who are more experienced than you, so you must be middle ranking.'

J'mat gave her a crooked grin, shaking his head in confusion. 'Holder girl, you're right, but you think about things the strangest way. Hideth's quite young still, but I'll make Wingsecond in just a few years, you'll see. Hideth's really smart and he's got a lot of initiative for a dragon; he's the most promising young brown in Benden!'

Shards, that was close! Kat thought. In her upbringing the first thing to establish with a new acquaintance was where they ranked; but of course most people wouldn't worry about a thing like that. _Normal_ people wouldn't worry about that.

An excited shiver ran up Kat's spine, and she laughed. I'm a normal person! I'm just some girl - I'm just Palla.

'What?' J'mat cocked his head. And he was just a normal person too, for all his dragon. As he boasted about Hideth's prowess all his self-assurance and maturity evaporated, and Kat could see the boy her own age.

'Oh, I don't know. I'm just happy! I love the Autumn Gather.'

J'mat didn't say anything for an instant, staring into the space over her head with an absent look on his face. Then he looked down at her and grinned. 'Come on then!' He grabbed her hand and towed her through the crowd.

'Where are we going?' J'mat's hand was much larger then hers, and Kat could feel the callouses and hard skin across his fingers. Around them the thunderous roar of hundreds of voices was filling her ears, and across that she could hear the skilfully entwined threads of gitar, drum and high, sweet pipe as the Harpers played a set piece. She could pick out the rich, savoury smell of roasted herdbeast, and her stomach growled. She tugged on J'mat's hand. 'Hey, stop a minute! Let's get something to eat.'

It was funny, she thought, as they walked onwards, tearing off strips of the meat with her teeth, how she could have absolutely no appetite when she sat in Lemos' hall and had dishes laid in front of her that were artistry, the epitome of their old cook's prodigious skill, but she enjoyed intensely the faintly charred lump of herd beast that was oozing juice all over her fingers. She giggled again and said, 'So, you didn't actually tell me where we're going.'

J'mat looked sideways at her. 'Want to meet Hideth? He wants to meet you.'

Kat stopped short, staring, and J'mat carried on a few steps before realising and turning back to her. 'What's wrong?'

This is a really bad idea, Kat thought. As if you aren't in enough trouble already, meeting a dragon is going to make it even worse. There won't be huge crowds around there, and people won't be able to assume that J'mat is some trader boy. You'll be seen; you'll be recognised. And even if you aren't, it's just going to get complicated. It's fine to chat and have a good time, but it would be a really bad idea to get any closer to a dragonrider. A really, really bad idea…

'Really?' she breathed.

J'mat laughed. 'Yeah, sure. Come on.'

The dragons were sprawled in a field just outside the Hold, and a ragged line of people were clustered along the fence, watching the huge beasts in awe. A couple of dragonriders were talking to them, and one of the smaller dragons, a glistening emerald beast, had ventured forwards towards them, looking curiously at the holder folk, her eyes whirling. Around her people were backing away from the fence, but her rider had managed to persuade a group of boys aged about eleven or twelve turns to come closer, and the slinky green dragon half-closed her eyes to sniff at them all in turn. Kat could see a puckered white scar drawing a jagged line across the membrane of the green's wing.

J'mat vaulted over the fence and held out a hand to help Kat scramble after him, adding green stains to the greasy marks she'd already managed to get on the skirt of her russet woollen dress. She made a mental note to wear the dress again some time soon - preferably within the next sevenday - so that she had an excuse for needing it washed. But right at the moment she didn't care.

J'mat led her over to the huddle of dragons, and as they approached a mid-sized brown lifted his head and gave a gentle roar, then scrambled to his feet, shaking out his wings and tucking them neatly away against his back before trotting over towards them. His hide was darker than the other brown in the group; a rich hue like newly ploughed earth, like velvet, a colour that Kat wanted to plunge her fingers into.

The next instant she forgot her speculations as Hideth loomed over her and she bit her lip hard not to scream. He was _huge_; she looked up and up and found only Hideth's broad chest and then his head where the sky should be. Kat could feel her eyes widening and her knees starting to shake as the brown leaned down towards her. His breath smelled of old meat and the sharp acrid odour she recognised from the fire heights, and his _teeth_; they were as long as her forearm, dull, stained ivory. Kat held her breath, clenching her hands so hard that her nails bit into her palm, and tried to force her legs not to collapse or run away.

J'mat touched her arm. 'It's all right.' He stepped forwards and slapped his dragon's muzzle casually. 'Hallo, you. Get down, will you? You're scaring her.'

Hideth blinked and obligingly lay down, reducing his imposing bulk somewhat; although not nearly enough for Kat's peace of mind. She found herself staring into one of his insectile, multi-faceted eyes; whirling and colourful and definitely intelligent. She could recognise unmistakably the spark inside.

She swallowed hard. 'H - hello,' she ventured.

Hideth's lips rolled back, exposing his teeth, and Kat gasped until she realised that the dragon was grinning, much as a canine might.

'He likes you,' J'mat said. The boy was leaning casually against the huge creature's shoulder, looking pathetically small and fragile, and ridiculously unafraid.

'Uh - that's nice…' Kat said, shakily; then her eyes widened and breath caught again as she looked over Hideth's back. 'Shards!'

'What?' J'mat looked round, following her gaze. 'Oh, hello, Fidranth.'

Leaning over Hideth's other shoulder was another dragon's head; one that gleamed bronze-green, sunlight rippling over his shiny scales like water and dancing reflections scattering in all directions. And if she'd thought Hideth was big, then this new dragon was in a whole new class; Kat judged that his head alone was as big as she was. She made a small frightened noise in the back of her throat.

'Hmm.' The human voice was deeper than J'mat's and unfamiliar to her. 'You know, most browns aren't such good Search dragons, but Hideth might turn out to be the exception. Fidranth likes her.'

'Sir!' J'mat gasped. 'I didn't mean - I didn't think - Palla, this is my Wingleader D'lin and his dragon Fidranth,' he finished in some confusion.

'Palla, is it?' The tall Wingleader looked at her keenly, shaking out longish red-brown hair. 'I'll want to speak to your parents - and to Lord Galen too, I suppose. Unless you're from one of the outlying Holds? Who's your Holder?'

Kat had frozen into absolute stillness. She felt as though her world had fractured; as if moving might cause it to shatter into thousands of glittering and sharp fragments; but that jolted her back into herself. 'No!' she gasped, horrified, and then repeated more loudly, 'No! _NO!'_

She spun on her heel and fled back as fast as she could to the noise and shelter of the crowd.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Sorry for the delay… oh, and hi, Dusky; as requested, one update!**

* * *

Kat had to slow down when she reached the Hold. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, forcing herself to walk through the corridors, not run, and not to look over her shoulder, desperately afraid that J'mat would be pursuing her - or a dragon; she caught her breath raggedly as she imagined a dragon winging over the gather to find her, and the crowds shrieking and hiding, leaving her exposed, and her father…

Stop it! she said to herself, and forced herself to go on at a decorous pace, refusing to look behind. There was no one around, anyway; which was a good thing. Someone would be bound to notice that she hadn't been wearing this dress earlier, and Kat didn't think that she could cope right now with trying to come up with a reason why.

She walked through the doorway to her room without bothering to lift aside the curtain, letting her head be enfolded in the stiff, sour-smelling hide, and flopped down onto her bed without looking.

I got Searched. I got Searched. Father's going to find out! No, he's not. I just have to avoid them all until they go away… how long are they staying? It'll be hard to keep dodging after the gather ends. I could be a dragonrider! I'm Katriel of Lemos and I don't need them, anyway. They took my mother away! I don't _want_ to be a dragonrider. And Father's going to kill me if he even suspects any of what just happened. I'll have to - I'll have to stay in here for the rest of the gather. Shouldn't be too hard to stay away from them. Father's desperate not to let me meet them. Too bad the thing he's afraid of just happened anyway, hah, that'll show him. I could be a dragonrider! I could _fly_ - I could be up there, with the whole of Pern laid out beneath me, tiny and far away, and none of it would have the power to touch me, and the wind in my hair. And I'd get to wear riding gear, too, none of these sharding dresses. I'd never get away! Even the tiniest breath of it and Father will… he'll…

Katriel felt something inside her curl up, cringing, even at the thought. It wasn't… her father wouldn't _do_ anything to her, but it was what he would say - and the way he would say it - and the way he would look, as though she was some kind of insect - and she would know that he thought she was utterly and totally worthless and useless.

It's just built in, she thought, bitterly. I do everything he wants - I'm the perfect proper daughter - well, I am as far as he knows - but he doesn't care the tiniest bit about me anyway until I get something wrong, and then it's like he remembers he's got a daughter and it's a bad memory. I could be a dragonrider - a _queenrider_ - I could be… ah, I probably wouldn't even Impress anyway. And then what? I'd have to come back - and then -

She shuddered. That didn't even bear thinking about.

I wanted to get away; I was desperate; and now I can. Kat shuddered again. No! He'll - he'd have to be told - that bronzerider said he'd tell him, and then - no! I'm staying right here, for the next month if I have to.

I could _fly_…

* * *

Kat didn't realise how quiet the women's quarters were until she heard someone come in and then she figured that Egan and his nurse must have been out - with Fani, maybe. Fani was out there now; Kat could hear her gentle voice issuing instructions, and then soft footsteps approaching the doorway of her room. 'Kat?'

Kat was lying on her back, hugging a cushion and staring sightlessly at the ceiling. She couldn't raise the motivation to answer her stepmother; she hoped Fani would just go away.

But she was out of luck. Fani pushed aside the hide and opened the glow basket on the shelf by the door. 'Kat, why are you lying here in the dark? It's time to get changed for dinner.'

Get changed? Fani had spotted that she wasn't wearing her magnificent peacock blue brocade dress any more. It was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor where she'd left it earlier. Before…

She didn't say anything. She was only following Fani's conversation with only the very back of her mind. In front of her eyes, instead of the soot-stained rock ceiling of her room, she was watching a terrifying beast looming over her, with teeth like swords, that she knew was going to eat her… that shone and dazzled in the sunlight, that flew with breathtaking grace, that looked at her with curiosity and intelligent eyes…

Fani, who'd been smoothing out and folding the gown she'd picked up from the floor, looked over at her sharply, and came to sit on the edge of her bed. 'Kat? Are you unwell? Should I call the Healer?'

That jerked Kat awake for an instant. 'No!' She didn't want anyone having even the slightest chance to figure out where she'd been. Fani wouldn't guess - she hoped - her stepmother wouldn't dream that she might be disobeying her father that dramatically - but someone who wasn't herself so calm and conformist might start to have suspicions.

'Hmm.' Fani laid a cool hand on Kat's forehead. 'Well, you don't feel hot, so if you think you're all right.' She stood up, turning back to the blue dress. 'We'll have to press this to get the creases out. You shouldn't leave your clothes lying around like that, Kat. Why don't you wear the apricot silk for dinner?'

Kat hated the colour apricot; she didn't care if it _did_ suit her - 'brought out the colour in her cheeks' was what Fani said - but she was still watching great wings wheeling across the fragile blue of the autumn sky, and she couldn't gather the attention to protest. 'Mm.'

'Kat?' Fani's voice was really concerned now, her delicate eyebrows coming together. 'What's bothering you, sweetheart?' She paused, and then asked tentatively, 'It's not a boy, is it?'

Kat heard that, and smiled sadly. Oh Fani. If only that was all it was. If only you knew. 'No,' she said. 'I'm getting up, Fani. But I'm not wearing the apricot.'

* * *

She was floating on air even as she walked with her stepmother down to the hall. Fani had tucked an arm through Kat's, still a little worried about the girl, but Kat could barely feel the pressure of her hand.

Fani had to let go of her as they rounded a corner and came across a knot of men standing in the corridor. They backed up to let the ladies pass - at least one suddenly cut off comment made Kat suspect that they'd been talking about her father - and Olman the steward nodded respectfully to Fani as she stepped past, Kat treading meekly in her wake.

Behind her Kat heard footsteps and heavy breathing. She looked round to see the round, red-faced Harper apprentice approaching Olman, hesitantly holding out a handful pieces of hide. 'Sir - I was passing the Runner Station, and I volunteered to bring these up.' The boy's voice was unusually deep, with the resonant quality of a trained singer, startlingly at odds with his plump, round figure and vacant eyes. Kat almost smiled to herself, even while she kept her face properly blank. The dull, incurious boy was such a contrast to the subtle and courtly figures that peopled her world; as different as J'mat had been, in his fun-loving, open way.

She didn't let her face change, but Kat's stomach plummeted. She'd had _fun_ with J'mat. He'd seemed like someone who she could like; someone she could be friends with, even, and Kat had no friends - there was only Fani, who was good and kind, of course, but so dull.

But it was over now. She couldn't risk seeing J'mat again. No, she was going to stay right in the Hold; where she should have been all along! She wasn't going to risk her father finding out that she had been within a mile of a dragonrider. If she could help it, he wasn't going to notice her at all.

An image of sensitive, curious rainbow eyes and massive alien intelligence swam uninvited into her mind, and Kat dawdled slightly to let Fani go on around the corner ahead so that she could swallow against the hard lump in her throat.

She felt a slight tug at her sleeve, jumped and then instantly stilled the movement, furious with herself. She whirled her head around. 'What is it?'

The Harper boy was standing behind her, shyly offering her a folded and sealed piece of hide, his round moony face staring into the space over her shoulder. She frowned as took the hide from his hands. A letter for her? Who on earth would..?

She flipped it over to read her own name inscribed on the front; and gasped. The bold black letters were an educated person's handwriting, a script that she recognised. She broke open the seal hastily, almost ripping the hide with hands that were suddenly shaking uncontrollably.

'Kat?' Fani had noticed that Kat wasn't following her and come back to find out why.

Kat stuffed the letter into her sash, hoping it wasn't visible and then turned to face her stepmother, face bland. The Harper apprentice had vanished. 'Look, Fani, I don't feel too well after all. I'm going back to my room - going to sleep -' She was already backing away as she spoke, and Fani stepped towards her, concerned.

'Kat, you really don't look well. I'll take you back -'

'No, you'll be late, he won't like that,' Kat managed. 'Not your job to look after me. Berna will be there, Fani, I'll be absolutely fine, you go on -'

She bolted back around the corner, and stopped, tempted to open the letter then and there. But it would be risky; Fani might come after her, and she could hear the feet of drudges moving about the Hold. This corridor would be packed if it wasn't for the gather, still keeping most of the Holders outside for the evening's entertainment and dancing. The dignitaries were dining with Lord Galen, where Kat should be, but there were much more important things to think about.

She retraced her footsteps as fast as she could towards the ladies' quarters. Sheer blind luck that it had been the Harper apprentice that had brought those letters up and not one of the Runners! They'd have known to give _all_ the letters to Olman, and he'd have given the personal ones to her father, and Kat was sharding sure she'd never have seen it then. Had he written before? Had her father been deliberately getting rid of them? Reading them, even? Did Galen know everything, even while he left her to uncertainty and misery? Kat scowled, swept into her room, and finally unfolded the hide.

Her first reaction was disappointment; it wasn't a proper letter, just a tiny note. No one would pay a Runner just to send this. Her second reaction -

Kat looked round wildly. She'd have to wear the russet dress again; Fani would be bound to think something weird was going on if she messed up two in one day. She dragged it back on, and even made an attempt at folding and packing away the dress she'd been wearing for dinner, grudging every seconds delay. Then she flung a heavy wool cloak on over the russet dress; it would change the shape and colour as well as keeping her warm in the autumn evening, and was the best she was going to be able to manage in terms of changing her appearance. She didn't have time to attempt anything more elaborate; she was already on the way out of her room again, trying to walk softly to avoid drawing the notice of Egan's nurse in the next room even while she wanted to be running. She had to find the apprentice; but where might he be?

He might be out at the Gather still, but why would he have brought the letters up unless he was coming up to the Hold anyway? She let her itchy feet draw her into a pelting headlong run towards the quarters the Harpers had been allotted and cautiously twitched aside the edge of the curtain screening the doorway of the main room, peering surreptitiously in. The boy - she knew he'd been introduced, but she couldn't remember his name - was there all right, along with a few other Harpers, in a range of ages. Tercel was the only one she recognised; of course, with a number of distinguished guests in the Hold he wouldn't be eating at the High Table tonight, and the majority of ordinary people would be eating outside, as and when they felt like it, instead of attending the formal meal.

Kat focused her gaze on the apprentice, trying to catch his eye without anyone else spotting her, and almost dancing up and down in frustration. Come on! she begged him, silently. Look at the doorway. Look, I'm here, peering through the crack. Oh, come on!

Finally she caught his gaze, and jerked her head to indicate that she wanted him to come out. He gazed at her vacantly, and she groaned and beckoned.

No reaction. The boy was as foolish as a herd beast, she thought, savagely. He didn't seem to realise that she wanted him to come out and talk to her, and _subtly_.

Well, she wasn't going to wait for another chance. Kat pulled back, taking a minute to draw herself up straight and compose herself, then she called in her best imperious voice. 'Excuse me?'

The undercurrent of chatter and the odd musical note of one kind or another fell silent, but Kat had barely time to get nervous before Tercel drew aside the curtain, looking startled but polite. 'What can we help with, Lady Katriel?'

'I need to speak with the apprentice,' she told him. Tercel looked surprised and intrigued, but Katriel was giving him her best blank face and piercing stare, and he shrugged and turned away.

'Certainly, my lady. Dannen! Get yourself over here.'

'Apprentice Dannen,' Kat said. She wasn't entirely sure how to handle this. She didn't think the apprentice was clever enough to figure out that what she was up to was utterly forbidden, but she was sharding sure that Tercel knew, and she hadn't bargained on his intelligent, compassionate gaze looking over her. She had to get away. 'Could you come with me, please? It's regarding one of the letters you were kind enough to deliver earlier.'

'Are you all right?' Tercel asked her, as he had done - only days before! It seemed like much longer. Katriel gave him the same answer she had then. An emotionless look.

'Perfectly, Journeyman Tercel. Apprentice, follow me, please.'

Her glacial poise lasted her down the corridor, when she whirled round on the boy following her placidly. 'You've got to tell me how to find the man who gave you that letter!'

* * *

The outskirts of the Gather were getting distinctly raucous in places, as the liberal supply of wine ensured that plenty of people weren't going to be settling down for the night any time soon. Many of the people who'd travelled to the Gather would be camping out, and there were fires glowing everywhere in the gathering dusk, with boisterous groups laughing and talking. Katriel drew her cloak around her nervously and hurried onwards, following the apprentice's instructions, keeping to the shadows. Every nerve in her body screamed that it was dangerous out here; in the dark and surrounded by strangers.

She was so occupied with picking her way through the bushes, heart pounding, in order to stay out of sight of a particularly noisy group of men who were stumbling along the road passing a wineskin between them and talking in very loud, if slurred, voices, that she didn't notice the young couple entwined with each other in the long grass until she almost stepped on them. They were much too busy to notice her intrusion; Kat backed out and fled, blushing furiously in the dark and wishing fervently that she hadn't come. She shouldn't be here; she didn't like it at all and was thinking with passionate longing of her own bed and the cool serenity of Fani's company. She should have been sensible, not acted on impulse. She could have waited for the morning.

But to go back meant making her way through the dark Gather all over again. Kat faltered, biting her lip to stop tears springing into her eyes. She had to think; she had to look around and figure out where she was. How far would it be to get to the campsite the apprentice had described to her? She hadn't _wanted_ to wait; she'd thought, when she read the note, that perhaps she'd be able to explain her dilemma to someone who'd actually understand. She'd thought that something might actually have gone _right_ for once, and now here she was, cold and alone and scared, and everything was totally and utterly _wrong_.

Ahead of her was another of the camp fires, but it seemed one of the better behaved ones; Kat could hear chatting and laughter, but none of the belligerent raised voices or slurred speech and obscene comments that had been a prominent feature of some groups she'd had to pass closely. As she watched, a broad-shouldered young man stood up and went across to the fire, adding a piece of wood and poking at the flames so that they blazed up, throwing a wild dancing illumination across his face; a laughing golden-skinned face, with thick black brows and black hair that flopped attractively across his eyebrows.

Kat's heart jumped into her mouth; because she'd found him, it was all right, it was going to be all right after all, and she leapt forwards, her cloak streaming behind her, shouting joyfully, hysterically. 'Arrin! _Arrin!'_


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: So, first and foremost****, **_**enormous**_** apologies for the huge delay in updating this chapter (and for it being quite short now you've got it). I had the most massive block over writing the character of Arrin; I knew how I **_**wanted**_** him to come across, but I re-wrote the first page of this chapter five, six times and he just wouldn't come right. In the end I got something out, but I'm pretty sure I didn't really get it the way I hoped, so I'd welcome feedback on what impression you got of Arrin, please (and bear in mind I may have been trying to surprise you, so please don't just put 'you got him right'. Or not).**

**Thanks and I honestly will try and update much faster next time!**

* * *

Arrin slung a companionable arm over her shoulders, and Kat snuggled up gratefully against his warm and solid side. His travelling companions had accepted Arrin's explanation that Kat was family and had left them alone to catch up; they were sitting a little way from the fire, leaning against one of the wagons. 'Arrin, you haven't changed a bit!' Actually, that was an exaggeration. Arrin looked older; more muscular; his face was tanned and weatherbeaten, catching the flicker of the dim firelight; but she could still see clearly her hero and playmate in him, in the flash and brightness of his eyes and his swift engaging grin. Whatever the turns had done to Arrin, they hadn't made him sad or bitter.

'You have, though.' Arrin was looking at her admiringly. 'You've grown into quite the proper one, Lady Katriel.'

'Oh, shut up.' Kat elbowed him in the ribs. 'Start talking that rubbish and I'll leave you to listen to yourself. Would the proper young lady be out here in the dark unescorted?'

Arrin's eyes twinkled. 'Perhaps you haven't changed that much, then. How are you, scruff?'

'Awful.' Kat was plunged into gloom. 'Arrin, since you left everything has only got worse. Father doesn't even speak unless he absolutely has to these days, and nothing ever happens… nothing…'

Arrin's arm tightened around her, and he looked down at her, frowning. 'Nothing how?'

'I mean… I don't think he thinks at all, Arrin. It's like he performs his official duties and then just switches off; there's nothing here beyond a very efficiently run Hold, nothing at all. I'm going mad with boredom, I swear I am, and I know he has the Hold to run and all, but he still has free time, and I can't believe that he's really there through all of it or he'd be almost as bad as me. He'd have to be!'

Arrin winced. 'I remember. Soul-killing. You ought to get out of here, Kat. I'd like to take you away, but -'

'Really?' Kat raised her head with a sudden rush of hope.

Arrin met her gaze and his dark eyes were worried and compassionate pools. 'The sharding thing is that I can't, Kat. I took on with a Seaholder at the tip of the Nerat peninsula; Grey Cliffs Seahold is the place, and Faram's his name, a truly decent man, but the Hold's pushed to capacity. He only took me on because he needed people to man the boats. I'm away out to sea for weeks at a time sometimes; it's a hard life, but I'm good at it, Kat, really good at it. But you couldn't, and I wouldn't be there to help you.'

'Oh.' Kat closed her eyes, put on her best uncaring face, and asked lightly. 'Why are you here, then?'

'To see you, of course… I volunteered to join a group coming up here to collect the brasswork fittings for a new ship. It was too much for our local Crafthall, but the Smiths offered to bring them here for us rather than us have to go all the way to the main hall for them. No one thought it was weird that I wanted to come along; she'll be my ship when she's finished. Well, I'll work aboard her.'

'Arrin, you don't know how glad I am that you've come. But are you sure I can't come with you? There must be _something_ I could do in a Seahold - however difficult or boring - I don't mind -' Now that the idea had been voiced, Kat couldn't get her mind away from it. To go away with Arrin, to live wild and free, to be just another girl in a hold! Her mind raced enticingly over images of herself barefoot, skirts kilted up, running over grass - no, sand, a seashore, a beach! - or strolling through a gather in a laughing group of girls, or slicing roots in a kitchen full of gossip and heat, or - her imagination failed her.

Arrin frowned anxiously. 'Kat, really, you wouldn't like - look, there must be _somewhere_ you can go, surely? Something that would suit you more. I mean - what about Fani's relatives, or somewhere? Can't you go and stay there?'

'Arrin, I'm _not_ putting that to him.' Kat was incredulous. 'Can you even imagine? He'd say -' She shuddered. 'He'd probably say that it was asking for charity, and damaging to Lemos' dignity. And then he'd give me the "proud, dignified, solitary" lecture. And then he'd dismiss me, all the time being way too proud, dignified and solitary to notice that I'm asking because I'm _desperate_, Arrin, really desperate.' Her voice cracked.

'Hey, Kat, hey, don't cry.' Arrin rocked her gently. 'There'll be a way. There'll be an answer. I promise.'

Arrin sounded pretty desperate himself. Kat swallowed and said grimly. 'Don't make promises you can't keep.'

She felt Arrin flinch, and leant her head against his shoulder to show him she wasn't angry with him. He was trying to help, and he was helping so much just by being here. It didn't matter that the hard wood was making her back stiff or the rough ground digging into her legs through her skirt, or that the wind was rising and sliding chillingly through and around all the gaps in her cloak. She hadn't felt this calm and this comfortable since - actually, since this afternoon, with J'mat.

Kat blinked. That needed thinking about.

She looked upwards. The stars were very bright, and the Red Star was sitting mockingly on the eastern horizon, clear and threatening. The Red Star made her think of dragonriders again; and she firmly wrenched her mind away. That was only going to lead to trouble; even more trouble than she'd be in if -

Abruptly, she realised that conversation around Arrin's company's campfire had dwindled into a few desultory phrases as the group broke up; the whole night had gone quiet, and everywhere fires were dying away into darkness. She could hear the faint mournful cry of a night bird in the distance, and tiny scufflings in the grass that were probably small animals hoping to scavenge food scraps from the gather. 'Arrin - _how late is it?_'

'Late,' he said, and then realised why she asked. 'Oh, shards. Come on.' He leapt to his feet and pulled her up, steadying her. 'I'll walk you back. Although I'm not coming anywhere near the main Hold, you realise.'

Kat nodded. 'No,' she said in fervent agreement. 'Now you've got out you should stay well clear. Actually -'

'Actually what?' Arrin asked. 'This way.' He took her hand and tugged her back to the road, and Kat could feel the change in his hand; as big and warm and strong as she remembered, but now rough and hardened; a working man's hand. Yes, Arrin had found his way out - a way that suited him, with all his turbulence and energy.

'It was good of you to come back,' she said, suddenly a touch shy. 'Considering the trouble that'd happen if you two met, and all.'

She felt rather than saw him turn his head to her and he squeezed her hand. 'No trouble at all, scruff.'

Walking back with Arrin wasn't frightening at all. The noises had subsided and there was no one on the road. It might even have been fun; but Kat had her cloak wrapped tightly around her, stumbling occasionally as she hurried along, almost dragging her uncle at times. Oh, she mustn't be too late, she mustn't; she'd get found out.

Arrin tugged at her hand at the edge of the main courtyard and she stopped, letting him swing her round to face him. The cobbled square was still lit, guttering torches dyeing the night flame-coloured, and a few hurried figures were passing back and forwards across the area. Kat relaxed slightly. The Hold wasn't locked down for the night; she'd be able to slide in through a side door and hopefully to find a way back to the ladies' quarters before she was missed.

'This is where I leave you,' Arrin said.

Kat nodded. Despite her hurry, she suddenly didn't want Arrin to let go of her hand. 'You're not - leaving, yet, though, right? I'll see you again?'

She'd had years of learning to hide the pleading in her voice, but maybe Arrin heard it anyway. He said, 'Of course. We won't go until the Gather ends. I've the day free tomorrow - can you get away?'

Kat began to nod again, and then remembered. 'No - I - I've got to keep out of sight. I'm not sure that I can come out at all in the daytime, Arrin. Not until the dragonriders go away.'

'I'd _heard_ there were dragonriders here,' her uncle muttered, half to himself. 'The mood's a bit ugly, too. I can understand that you don't want to have to face them.'

'It's not that - well, not really. It's that - Arrin, they're on Search! And - and - they've Searched me!'

She felt Arrin's sudden stillness and tension, and he asked urgently, '_What?_ How did that happen? How did he allow it? How did he _react?_'

'He doesn't know,' Kat whispered. The cold breeze was flapping her cloak so that it slapped against her ankles, and her feet were frozen lumps where she'd walked in her slippers across dew-laden grass. 'I slipped out, Arrin, to have a look around the Gather, and I met one of the dragonriders, he's about my age, he's called J'mat, only I didn't realise he was a dragonrider straight away, and he didn't know who _I_ was, and he took me to see - no, to _meet_ - his dragon, and he Searched me. And then the Wingleader and his dragon came over and they said I should be a candidate too.'

She stopped, and Arrin said breathlessly, 'Go on. What next?'

'There isn't any more,' Kat said, lamely. 'The Wingleader said he'd have to talk to my family about me being Searched, and I panicked and ran away. They don't know who I am. Father made me go indoors and wait when they arrived, so I never met them as _me_. I was pretending just to be an ordinary girl at the Gather yesterday.'

Arrin whistled, and slipped a comforting arm round her shoulders again. 'So the dragonriders don't know you're the Lord's daughter, and he doesn't know you got Searched? That's some mess you're in, scruff. You got Searched!' His voice was distant and amazed - and then, suddenly, he laughed.

'What's funny?' Kat snapped.

'The irony of it… listen, Kat, can't you see that this could be the answer?'

She blinked. 'You're mad. This is the _problem_.'

'No, seriously, Kat. You want to get out. You want to find somewhere to go, something to do, a different life. And now you're being offered it! A dragonrider! Kat, it's sharding amazing!'

Kat caught her breath, the pictures of dragon wings and blue skies and far away landscapes reeling again across her vision. Arrin's enthusiasm made it seem somehow possible again, and dazzling. It's an honour to be Searched, she remembered. To be Searched for the Queen.

She'd never actually thought of it that way before. The _normal_ way to see it, she realised. Oh, I'm so grateful Arrin's here. Arrin's so real - around him the distortions of this Hold relax back to their proper proportions.

And then, as suddenly as the dizzying moment of insight had hit her it vanished again. 'Arrin, I _can't_,' she said. 'I _can't_ tell him -'

Arrin cursed, softly and fluently. His face was hidden in the shadows, but Kat knew that the compassionate, hopeless look would be back in his eyes.

Kat found herself swallowing against sudden tears, the firelit square suddenly shifting and blurring in front of her eyes. What shall I do? she wanted to ask, but she didn't, because she knew that Arrin didn't have an answer either, and she didn't think that she could bear it to hear him telling her again that there would be, must be an answer when she knew that he couldn't see a way out for her, ever.

'I - have to go,' she said, her voice wavering.

Arrin nodded, a faint movement in the darkness, and hugged her. 'You know where to find me, Kat. You be careful.'

She nodded against his chest, feeling protected and cared for in her uncle's firm, strong embrace, and then reluctantly pulled away. 'Goodbye.'

Small, weak and cold, she slipped across the open space towards the Hold, skirting the edge of the firelit area. When she looked back Arrin's form had already melted into the shadows and disappeared.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: I was gonna update this at the beginning of the week, but then someone put a new book into my hands, so… anyway, it's here now! Merry Christmas everyone! (or suitable season's greetings depending on one's race, religion, personal preference… thanks Miz ;-P )**

**cathrl - you asked THE question. So you have to wait and see. Hope the answer is satisfactory!**

* * *

'There's lots of Pallas,' the boy said sullenly. 'Don't know which could be the one you want.'

J'mat sighed. 'All right, I get the picture. Go on, then.' The boy scampered off into the crowd, and J'mat walked onwards, easing out his stiff shoulders and back. He got the picture all right; he could see clearly enough that as soon as people figured him for a dragonrider they set out to be unpleasant and obstructive._ I'm not going to get anything out of them_, he said, glumly. _Can't you find her, Hideth?_

_I know she is there_, the brown rumbled patiently. _I can feel her. But I cannot tell you exactly where_.

_And with this many people everywhere, knowing roughly where she is isn't going to do me any good at all_. He looked about with resignation. To his left a weaver was eagerly demonstrating his wares to a couple of holder women, letting them finger a bolt of cloth, while on his other side a noisy argument had broken out among three men outside a potter's stall. The men were flushed, facing each other angrily; the stall holder looked as though he was nervously calculating what to whisk out of the way first if a fight began. Their raised voices grated on J'mat's nerves; he swung away, ducking behind the weaver's booth. _I'm going back up to the dancing square. If she's anywhere_ -

He broke off. He had met Palla in the dancing square; if she didn't want to be found then she would know not to go there again.

_But why?_ he asked, for what felt like the thousandth time. _Why, why, why did she run off like that? What did we - oh, forget it_. He knew perfectly well what they had done. D'lin had told Palla that he'd like her to become a candidate.

_She was scared_, Hideth said. _They are all like that here_.

_Yes, but she was - she was different_. J'mat frowned, trying to explain what he meant. The wind was getting up, ruffling through his hair as he walked up the gentle slope back towards the main Hold. He was out of the bustle of the gather now; although the odd person still wandered past him, intent on their own business, the roar of the crowd seemed oddly distant. _She didn't hate us like these others. She was _surprised_ when she found out I was a dragonrider, but she didn't run away _then. _That was later_. He thought he heard footsteps and looked up; there was no one in sight. He blinked and glanced round. The wind was flapping a piece of canvas idly against the side of a cart. Perhaps that was the noise that he'd heard.

_Sorry, Hideth, where was I? Yes - Palla - I think what frightened her was_ -

He was broken off by Hideth's bugle of alarm. The warning - sudden, wordless, instinctive - shot straight down his spine and to his limbs and had him spinning round and dropping into a crouch, drawing his knife, before he had even had a chance to think about it. _What is it, Hideth?_

_Bad men follow you!_ J'mat could sense Hideth baring his teeth and crouching for a spring into the air.

_No! Hideth, stay there!_ He put as much mental force into the words as he could manage. He could just imagine the panic that would ensue if a dragon came diving into the gather; Hideth wouldn't hurt anyone, but they wouldn't believe that. And he couldn't see anyone; but he had been picking his way between wagons and camps, and there were plenty of places to hide. And those footsteps he'd thought he'd heard…

J'mat swallowed. His heart was pounding hard against his chest, and he wanted Hideth very much. Ruthlessly he slammed a solid wall around the instinct to call for his dragon. It wasn't going to be him who'd frighten the Holders so much that their hatred and aggression ruined the Search; Marith had picked out a likely lad the previous day, and then there was Palla… J'mat wasn't going to be responsible for having those candidates dragged away by panicking families. He forced his voice to be as steady as possible and called, 'I know you're there.'

For a moment he thought that nothing was going to happen; then a thickset figure stepped out from behind a rickety, tar-stained cart, and like shadows four more followed him.

_Five of them_, J'mat thought, grimly. _Hideth, stay put, but if I call then come quickly. And get Fidranth to tell D'lin I'm in trouble. I'll stall them. I might be able to convince them we're not trouble_.

The lead man had a broad, handsome face, and weathered skin from working outdoors. He wasn't obviously armed, and J'mat took comfort from that; if they'd been after his life then he'd have expected to see a sword. He had no chance anyway; if he was going to be beaten up it was nice to think that they probably intended him to come out of it.

Actually, it wasn't much comfort at all.

Hideth will come the minute any of them touches me, he reminded himself. He's only seconds away, down outside the Hold. D'lin will bring help. Stall them. Don't provoke a fight.

He made himself put his knife back into its sheathe on his belt and unclench his fingers from around it, even as he did so watching the leader of the group confronting him. His hands were sweaty; he wiped them as he stood up to his full height. 'I have no quarrel with you.'

One of the men snorted. 'Yeh're a stinkin' dragonrider, ent you?' He was a tall, gaunt man, with dark hair falling limply across pale skin, and he had a striking gutteral accent.

'Yes, and I spend my life protecting Pern from thread.'

That made them pause. All of these men would've worked on the ground crews. They knew what thread could do; they'd have seen threadscores and threadbare ground.

'All well and good,' the leader put in. 'So why aren't you back in your Weyr, doing that?'

They must know the answer. J'mat tried to think of a safe, non-confrontational response and couldn't. He fell back on the obvious truth. 'We need candidates…' he began, hesitantly, and realised straight away that it had been the wrong thing to say. The men hustled up closer to him, their faces darkening, and he fought with his legs not to run away.

'Then listen to this, dragonrider,' said the leader, fiercely, and he jabbed J'mat in the chest with a finger. J'mat heard Hideth growl, and did his best to hush the dragon even as his own heart seemed to leap up into his mouth. He wondered if he was going to be sick. 'Get back to the Weyr, you with your dragons and your high ideals and your Search. We don't want you here; you'll not have our daughters and wives.'

'Wait,' said J'mat, holding up both hands peaceably. His head was spinning giddily; the air itself seemed to be thickening threateningly. 'We don't do that. I -'

He was cut off by bitter laughter. '_We don't do that_, he says,' marvelled one of the men, a blond muscled giant who hadn't yet spoken. 'He should try telling Lord Galen that.'

'No, _listen_ to me,' J'mat insisted. 'I mean it. I know about - about what happened to Lady Calantha. The Masterharper told us; he had to! I didn't know. I can't have been more than a baby, and it's the sort of thing that no one's proud of. But you should hear the way the older riders say I'den's name; it's like a curse, honestly. We're _not_ like him.'

There was a brief pause. Then a broken-nosed man looked sideways at the leader and said, 'He's just a boy.'

The lean, handsome leader was regarding J'mat steadily, and the brownrider hoped desperately that his nerves weren't showing on his face. Could he say something else? Was there something that could convince them that he was in earnest?

'You're right,' the man tossed over his shoulder to his companion, turning his head slightly even though his eyes never strayed from J'mat's face. 'He believes what he's saying. Still -' He jabbed a finger towards J'mat again '- you remember what we've said. We don't like dragonriders here. Keep your hands off those who're unwilling. Even a dragon doesn't make a man invincible. _We_ know that.'

He jerked a head at his followers and they vanished, ducking unobtrusively behind various obstructions until J'mat was as alone as he had started, thinking hard. _Hideth? What did he mean by _that?

_Are you hurt? What have the bad men done to you? I will bite them!_ Hideth wasn't much concerned with the man's cryptic comments.

J'mat jumped again when he heard running footsteps, and jerked his head up to see D'lin, three other dragonriders and two men in Harper blue running up the gentle slope towards him. His Weyrleader leapt athletically over an outstretched tie rope and grabbed J'mat's shoulder. 'Are you hurt? What happened?'

'I'm fine…' _Hideth, I'm _fine, he added, firmly. _They've gone_.

He felt the brown shake himself and settle back to the ground, furling his wings along his sides. _Come back here straight away_, Hideth said distrustfully.

_Alright, alright, hush Hideth. I'm on my way_. Aloud he said, 'Can we walk back? Hideth…'

'You seem to be all in one piece.' D'lin released him and turned back to the others he'd gathered. 'Masterharper, our little crisis seems to be over. I'm sorry to have bothered you. Do you have somewhere you need to get back to?'

'On the contrary.' The Masterharper's piercing dark eyes were sweeping across J'mat's face, and the boy gulped as he realised exactly who D'lin had grabbed in his rush to rescue his youngest rider. 'If you have no objection, bronzerider, I'll walk back with you. I'm extremely intrigued to learn what's happened here.'

'Certainly.' D'lin gave the older man a brief nod and led the way back downwards and out of the Hold. 'J'mat. Start talking.'

J'mat took a deep breath. 'Well, I was wandering around the gather, and getting nowhere much. I got bored and decided to head back up to the Hold courtyard, but I was fed up with crowd, so I thought I'd walk up the back here, off the road and away from the stalls. Then Hideth told me there was someone following me. There were five men, and they said…' He trailed off. 'They meant Palla, didn't they? Even if they don't actually know about her.'

'We weren't there, J'mat. Talk to the rest of us.'

J'mat looked up at his Weyrleader as if he hadn't heard D'lin's interruption. 'Palla ran away,' he said, miserably. 'She doesn't want to stand as a candidate. She made that pretty clear. But we've been hunting for her, and that's not fair, is it? It should be her choice. She knows where we are. We shouldn't be looking for her. As though we're going to… force her to… come… with us…'

'That would indeed be a mistake,' the Masterharper said, gravely, glancing over at D'lin. 'But on the other hand, we should be encouraging strong candidates from Lemos to stand. It is time that we bridged the distance between this Hold and their Weyr. If you don't mind my asking - who is this Palla?'

* * *

Tercel's back ached from crouching over his gitar, and his head was swimming with the noise and heat. Leaving Imbel and Fangor to soothe sore throats with the contents of the flagon generously donated to the Harpers by the wine seller, he'd slipped away from the performance area. They'd finally finished their three hour set; although Fangor would have to hang around because his piping was needed later, and Imbel would _want_ to hang around because he could always find a pretty Holder girl willing to pass the time of day with a Harper, Tercel had had enough and he wanted to rest. A _bath_ would be nice. There was only one hot pool if you didn't count the ones in the Lord's and Ladies' quarters, so usually it was too much hassle to try and get an opportunity to use it; but today he might be able to get a lovely long undisturbed soak if everyone else who wanted to use the hot pool was out at the Gather. Yes. That _was_ a good idea.

He padded down the empty corridor, passing irregularly spaced side passageways, his gitar slung across his back in its soft hide case. It was cool and still, and the soft echoes of his footsteps filtered around the hollow rock passageway, breaking the silence. The solid rock construction of the Hold made it impossible to hear the sounds of merriment from outside, and he felt himself settling into a sleepy peace.

He never knew what instinct made him turn. He didn't hear anything, or he didn't think he did; but when he paused and turned his head he saw a slim figure, skirts hooked up in one hand, silently sliding down the corridor in the opposite direction.

'Lady Katriel…?'

She jumped, her head jerking upwards with shock as she spun towards him, the fabric of her dress whirling around her. Tercel held out a hand to her and hurried back down the corridor, forgetting his tiredness. 'Here, Lady Katriel, are you all right?'

'I'm fine,' she snapped; but she hadn't had the time to perfect the face, the stony, blank face she usually gave him, and he pushed onwards.

'You're not! You're - afraid. Why? What are you afraid of?'

Her eyes widened slightly; for an instant he felt that things hung in the balance. She could still, of course, close down and look down her nose at him. She could refuse, yet again, to let him try to help her.

What she did instead was the last thing that he expected. She rolled her eyes and said, 'What, it's not obvious?'

Tercel blinked. There she was, standing in front of him in her azure gown, all golden and blue and beautiful - and she had a sense of humour. He felt himself grinning in response to her joke despite feeling perfectly serious, and abruptly, his stomach leaping with the flash of insight, he remembered what J'mat had said: _silent; controlled; but a laugher_.

'You're Palla.' He swallowed, his mind whirling. What to do now? Going to the Weyr would give Katriel her freedom - but what about the rest of the Hold? How would her father react? Was there anything he could do to limit the damage? Perhaps he could speak with Lady Fani; but it would come better from the girl herself. Perhaps she'd already told… no. He looked back at her. She'd learnt from her father only too well.

'Ssh!' she hissed. 'You _mustn't_ say it, Tercel. He'll find out.'

Tercel frowned. 'But he's going to find out anyway. Wouldn't it be better if you told him now?'

'He's not going to find out,' she hissed fiercely, and then drew herself up sticking her chin out. 'Not unless you tell him. Are you going to?'

'No.' he said slowly. 'But - how is he not going to find out? He'll see you're missing, there's nothing…'

She was shaking her head again, too fast. 'No! I'm going nowhere.'

'What?' Tercel reached out to her again. 'You're going to - Why? I mean - I know I've not been here very long, but I've _never_ seen your father doing anything…' He floundered for the right word. 'Anything cruel, or violent, he just - what are you afraid he'll do to you? He's - he's forbidding, but he's not frightening. Is he?'

Katriel was losing her fragile composure. 'No. You - you don't understand. You haven't been here long enough. He mustn't know - he - I -' Her hands, he noticed, were white where they gripped one another. 'You - don't get it, Tercel. I - good night!' She pushed past him and dashed away back up the corridor.

Tercel looked after her with lively concern. I know she's making wrong decisions, he thought, frustrated. But what can I do to help? I - nothing! She won't let me! I've got to tell Master Mordan about this _right now._

What's she afraid of?


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern _still_**** belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

* * *

It was morning. Kat could hear footsteps crossing backwards and forwards outside her room; probably Egan's nurse, Berna, although it might be Fani. The air was still and dead; Kat felt as though dust should be settling over her face.

It was morning; the final morning of the Autumn Gather.

Kat stretched her legs out. They felt tight, as if she'd kept them still for too long. She needed to get out, to do something energetic. Like - like -

Kat's imagination failed her. She couldn't think of anything suitably athletic that would be allowed. She couldn't even persuade Fani to come out for a walk; it didn't make any sense while the Gather was on. And besides - she scowled, remembering - she had to stay indoors until this evening anyway. Until the dragonriders left.

With her muscles cramped and aching and hampered by her skirts, tied up in swathes of heavy material, when she'd been offered the freedom of the skies…

Kat rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin up in her hands, staring at the blank wall. What was she _doing_?

When she walked out into the cosy living room, Fani was there, sitting contentedly with her embroidery on her lap and one eye on Egan as the child sat on the floor, tugging industriously at one corner of the rug, and frowning in concentration. Kat couldn't see what the boy was trying to achieve; but if it was to move the rug, then she doubted he'd have any luck. He was sitting on it.

'Good morning, Kat,' Fani said. She lifted a hand to gesture at a tray resting on a little table at one side of the room. 'Help yourself to something to eat. I thought I'd have a quiet morning indoors. The Gather is good fun, but it takes it out of me after a few days.'

'Sure,' said Kat, happily. It'd be nice to have Fani stay in with her; being with her calm and patient stepmother made hours spent doing almost nothing seem not quite so wasted. 'But - are you sure, Fani? I mean - we have turns and turns of quiet days, you don't really want to miss the Gather, do you?'

Fani smiled. 'Yes, Kat, I do. You're the one who likes things to be exciting. Oh -' She rose to her feet, startled, as Egan abandoned the rug and made a beeline towards the fire.

'I got it.' Kat dropped cross-legged onto the floor and grabbed the crawling child before he could burn himself. 'Hey, bad idea.' She picked him up and lifted him up above her head to the full stretch of her arms. 'You're flying!' Egan giggled in response and waved his arms and legs as she swooped him around. Kat grinned. She didn't actually like babies much - would have been driven out of her mind by Egan if she hadn't been sleeping badly at night anyway - but she had to admit that being a big sister was sort of amazing.

Fani smiled, put her sewing aside and walked over to the tray of food. She peeled and sliced a redfruit and then came back, holding the plate out to Kat. 'You need to eat. I'll trade.'

'Uh-huh.' Kat nodded, passed Egan back to his mother, detaching his sticky fingers from her sleeve, and - as he opened his mouth to complain - slid the first slice of redfruit into the child's mouth, tapping his nose with one finger. The baby's dark berry eyes widened with surprise, but he gurgled happily and began to chew on the sweet fruit.

Fani laughed and sat down again with Egan while Kat ate. She was abruptly depressed again - it was the word 'flying' that had done it. And she didn't know what to do. _Tercel knew_. And it could only be a matter of time before other people knew too. She was running out of options and running out of time. She needed help.

'Kat? Are you all right?'

From her position on the floor, Kat looked up at her serene, beautiful stepmother and said impulsively, 'Fani, I - it's - there's something that I want to do. Very, very much. But he'd hate it. He'd never, ever allow it, even though it's really quite a good thing. What would you do?'

Fani bounced Egan on her knee, considering. 'That depends. What is it?'

Warning bells were sounding in Kat's brain. Too many people know already! her thoughts insisted. Arrin - Tercel could tell _anyone_ - and Fani is lovely, but she might feel that this is _so_ important that she has to tell father - she might even think that she's helping me, interceding on my behalf - 'I - can't say, Fani. But really, truly, there's nothing shameful about it. It's great. I promise.'

Fani smiled, her eyes dark liquid pools. 'Then tell your father, not me.'

'What?'

'Tell Galen. You're old enough to make your own decisions. Go to your father, and tell him what you've decided to do.'

'_Tell_ him?' Kat couldn't quite wrap her mind around the concept. 'He'd never allow it, Fani!'

'I didn't say "ask him for permission", Kat. Just keep your temper, explain to Galen _why_ you're planning to do whatever it is and why it's a good thing, and then go.'

'It doesn't matter if I explain or not! It won't at all change the way he feels about it.'

Fani lifted one delicately curved eyebrow and said with a suspicion of dryness. 'No. You're all the same; all pride. None of you can bear to be wrong. But he'll appreciate the explanation later on.'

Kat was diverted, but managed to cling onto the topic. 'Later on?' she asked, weakly.

'When you've gone and done it anyway.' Fani sounded utterly calm and matter of fact. She had taken her eyes from Kat's worried face and was carefully mopping squashed fruit from Egan's face and hands.

Kat blinked. Where was her passive and conventional stepmother?

Fani climbed to her feet. 'I really need hot water and soapsand, I'm going to take Egan through to the wash room. Kat.' She hoisted her son onto her shoulder and crouched down beside the girl, cupping her cheek in one hand. 'You're not happy. I know I'm always telling you to relax and to be patient, but it's time I admitted that it isn't going to work. This is right for me, but not for you. You know it and I know it. But Galen doesn't know it. He can't see the frustration and the bitterness and I don't think you've even seen him once in the last few days, so he certainly hasn't been able to see the emotional upheavals you've obviously been going through. Now I'm not trying to excuse him, because he's your father, and you're entitled to say that he ought to know, and to see, but it takes two of you. Talk to him. Don't shout at him - that's where Arrin went wrong, because it'll only make him stubborn and self-righteous. But explain. Show him why this is the right thing for you. Tell him you'll come back to visit and that you don't want this to be the end of your relationship. Tell him what time you're planning to leave. Then back off and give him time to think about it. I'd wager good money that by the time you come to depart he'll be there watching you off, with all the other proud parents. Perhaps he won't exactly be giving you his blessing, but he'll soften up when he sees that you keep your word and you _do_ come back, and you haven't abandoned him.'

Egan made a loud complaining noise and hit Fani's shoulder with his chubby little fist and his mother laughed. 'All right, all right, let's go, shall we?' She rose gracefully back to her feet and swung the child back into her arms, pushing aside the hide curtain that led into a shadowy corridor that eventually opened out into their hot bath room. Kat watched her go.

Fani paused in the doorway, looking back across one slender shoulder. 'And Kat? _I'd_ be proud of a goldrider in the family.'

'Another one,' Kat mumbled, automatically, and then remembered that for Fani it wouldn't be _another one_ anyway. Was that why she made it sound so easy, so reasonable? She - and how had she known? Kat jerked to her feet, prepared to follow her stepmother and demand some more answers, but at that moment Egan shrieked and then launched into a long unhappy wail, and Kat flinched back. Actually - maybe she could talk to Fani some time later…

But Fani had - she was - she - Kat shook her head incredulously. She loved Fani, but the older woman was - she was quiet, she was resigned, she made the best of things, she never kicked up trouble or fuss. She never _rebelled_. She never argued - did she? She didn't notice things, either - and she was insignificant, she didn't get told things, surely she didn't…

But - how had she known? Kat could only think of two solutions. Either Tercel had told her - or told someone else, who had told Fani - or Fani had worked it out herself. And - she wouldn't have been able to do that. Would she?

Kat suddenly felt like she didn't know anything at all. She'd never paid much attention to Fani's advice. But Fani seemed so sure - and she was _happy_ in her life.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt to listen to her.

* * *

Kat had forgotten that her father was out at the Gather, technically overseeing the proceedings, but actually sitting icily with his closest retainers - and, when they couldn't escape to more convivial company, his most important guests - and waiting for anyone brave enough to approach him with a request or problem, so she had to venture out into the noise and bustle of the crisp autumn day to find him. She could hear music playing again - slower and sweeter than a dance tune this time, one of the Harpers must be giving a solo performance while the dancers caught their breath - and the chatter of the crowd washed over her, making her feel a tiny bit more confident and cheerful.

Her head was itching, but she resisted the urge to scratch it. She'd spent a considerable time carefully coiling and pinning her hair into a formal arrangement, constraining it under a finely woven and embroidered strip of material, and she didn't want to ruin her handiwork now. Of course, as long as she looked respectable, her father wouldn't actually notice that she'd put effort into her hairstyle. Kat knew, really, that the reason for her careful and elaborate toilette wasn't to please her father by looking her imposing best, exactly as the Lord Holder's daughter should. It was procrastination plain and simple.

She didn't want to do it. She was burying the feeling underneath Fani's calm and certain voice, underneath the buzz of the crowd, underneath the dream of huge wings unfurled against the sky, but Kat's heart was thumping wild and erratically and her knees felt strangely weak. But she was going to do it. She _was_ going to tell her father she'd been Searched and she was going to the Weyr. Perhaps it was a good thing there were all these people around. It would - ease the tension, the focus, it might help her keep her back straight and her head up.

But as Kat, trembling slightly with resolution came up to her father's position - in front of the huge carven stone doors that led into Lemos' main hall and were almost never opened - she saw that the time was almost certainly wrong to try and say her piece.

Galen was on his feet, Olman and the senior Holders solid behind him, and her father was blazing with icy fury. Kat could see the Masterharper at the other end of the group, a few paces between him and the Holders as he watched shrewdly. Striding towards the Lord Holder, obvious with his rangy figure and shoulder-length russet mane, was the Wingleader.

Kat gulped. J'mat was flanking his wingleader, she saw, and an older rider that she didn't recognise was on D'lin's other side. Both looked serious and determined. D'lin seemed a lot more at ease, but Kat didn't know if that was a good thing or not. What reason could he possibly have to speak to her father? He must _know_ that Galen hated him and everything that he stood for.

D'lin halted in front of the Lord Holder and made a shallow, graceful bow, ignoring the atmosphere. 'Lord Galen. We've come to take our leave. We've been lucky enough to find three suitable boys in the Hold who have agreed to come back to Benden and stand for Impression, and we think it unlikely that we will discover any more now that people are beginning to pack up and leave the Gather, so we'll be flying out within the hour.'

Kat's throat went dry. _Less than an hour_. That was how long she had now; to make a decision, to find some kind of resolution. Or to stay at Lemos.

'Swift journey, bronzerider,' Galen forced out, the emphasis on 'swift', and Kat gasped again, her head swinging round to focus on her father's face. Because this _wasn't_ Galen; not the one she knew, the one she'd spent turns obeying and resenting and fearing - to no effect, because _nothing_ moved Galen. He was a stone; a shell; dead inside. He wasn't _this_ - dangerous, venomous, bitter, _hurting_. Alive.

Now he made a smart turn and marched away, through the line of Holders, who closed up behind him, glaring at the dragonriders, and Galen disappeared in the direction of the Hold. He passed Kat; he didn't even see her as she took an automatic step away from the aura of hostility he projected.

'Lady Katriel.' The Masterharper, as smooth and courteous as ever, caught sight of her and gave a welcoming smile. Olman and the Holders bowed. She could see now how much they'd learned from Galen; they were desperately worried, but they wouldn't blink or murmur or move in front of the dragonriders. But the dragonriders were leaving; as Galen strode away D'lin had given a brief hand gesture and the three riders had wheeled casually away. And then, hearing the Masterharper's greeting, the closest rider turned his dark head briefly to glance at her - and Kat's eyes met J'mat's.

The young dragonrider's lifted foot came down with unnecessary force, his figure jolting rigid. He opened his mouth - and closed it again, responding to the desperate appeal Kat was projecting at him from wide and horrified eyes.

Kat watched J'mat striding away through the Gather crowd - still raucous, still laughing, totally unaware of what had just happened - at his Wingleader's shoulder, shaken. Everything suddenly seemed to be rushing towards her. There was no time left! An hour - less than an hour - to decide what to do; to choose a life. And her options were running short. J'mat knew - Tercel knew - Fani knew - it could only be a matter of time before everyone knew, and before that happened she needed to have chosen, to have decided, to have _done something_, not just to have stood here, staring after J'mat, her head spinning and her breath catching and coming short -

Kat twisted and followed her father as fast as decorum allowed.

* * *

She stopped outside Galen's office. She was sure that her father was in there; he always was. Kat could count the number of times that she'd entered the room on the fingers of one hand; she retained the vague memory of a bare and rocky room, without any of the comforts that filled the rest of the Hold.

The hide curtain across the doorway might as well have been a shroud; Kat could hear nothing but the ghastly hush of the deserted corridor. She laid her hands against the wall and leaned her forehead against the cool, smoothly worn stone, shutting her eyes to think.

Tercel had asked why she was afraid. And she hadn't had an answer.

Why am I afraid? she asked herself. Why can't I even _ask_ him for what I want? Why is it that the idea he might find out things about my life - even fairly innocent things - has me scrabbling around, desperately cold inside, to stop him knowing? I'm not afraid of him being angry - he used to shout at Arrin all the time, shards, the pair of them used to _scream_, and sure I hated it, but who doesn't hate watching that? And he never _hurt_ Arrin.

He never shouts at me. He - never shouts at all any more. He just - looks - She shuddered involuntarily and screwed her eyes tighter shut. That's it. It's - the dead look. It's - She pressed her hands against the wall to force them into stillness, trying to blank out the mental image. It's… hammering my fists into bloody pulp against the stone… shouting and shouting into empty blackness and slowly suffocating… it's the _thing_, the empty-nightmare-monster that used to be my father. It's - ugh - I hate it, I hate it! I can't -

She swayed on her feet, wanting to run away, screaming in every muscle, and caught herself. It's gone! It's alright, it's alright, it's _gone_. That - him - outside - it was pretty vicious, but it was - it was feeling. It'll be alright. Even if he shouts and forbids it, at least - he'll _care_ what I'm doing -

She sucked in a deep and wavering breath and called hesitantly, 'Father? I'm - coming in -'

She could feel the rough, heavy leather trembling with her fingers as she lifted the curtain aside. Galen was sitting at his desk, bent over some work, and she felt vaguely disappointed to notice it - as though she wasn't expecting it, as though that wasn't what he was always doing! 'Father?'

There was a tiny pause, a single heartbeat, and he lifted his head. 'Katriel, why are you not where you are supposed to be?'

And the voice was icy and the eyes were dead and Katriel felt the blood draining out of her leaving her stiff and white and cold. 'Yes, Father,' she whispered, and dropped the hide curtain as though it burnt her, so that it fell like a tombstone between them. And then she was running, running desperately to find a way out, tears streaming down her face.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: Pern****and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey. Surprise.**

**AN: I would say 'here is a nice long chapter for you', but actually it would be more appropriate to put 'here is a _really miserable_ long chapter for you'... But it's miserable in a different way to what went before, so that's at least more interesting, right?**

**Obviously, over Christmas I've been updating really frequently, but I'm afraid that's probably going to tail away a bit now because I've been at home doing that; I go back to work on Monday, so that will cut down writing time, and this weekend I have to move back into my crummy lodgings with almost no internet access, so I'll mostly only be around at the weekends for another few months. Assuming you guys can put up with that, I'll see you next time - and here's the story!**

* * *

It was morning again. The gather crowds had vanished like autumn mist, first trickling and then flooding away to their own homes, leaving trampled and muddy grass in the close fields, empty bottles and wineskins casually discarded, and scraps of hide and cloth gusting forlornly over the paved court and fire-cleansed stone of the Hold itself. Only a few determined gather-goers had stayed overnight, and were now packing up their camps - slowly, wincing at sudden movements, complaining about the steadily worsening weather. Just as suddenly, the long stone corridors and lofty chambers of the Hold had filled up again: while during the Gather the steamy, bustling kitchen had been the only part of the Hold alive, now one of the larger communal rooms had been appropriated by a group of women darning; Olman and a group of senior Holders were in the main hall, maps of the Hold spread out in front of them, planning crops to be seeded before the frosts came; in the huge outer caverns near the stables others were overhauling the ploughs and harnessing up the huge, powerful runner beasts; children dashed down corridors - those who weren't shut in the schoolroom with Tercel, dutifully chanting teaching ballads - and a group of girls was perched on the stairs, giggling as they shared stories of their Gather exploits.

Yes, the Hold was full - and noisy. It was absolutely illogical to feel lonely. Fani shook her head in irritation and reached out to swing the shutters across the dreary grey landscape outside. Misty drizzle was hanging coldly in the air and drifting across the sad remnants of the Gather, settling in the deep window embrasure. Fani ran a hand across the damp, clammy stone and frowned. They'd need to try and minimise the humidity in the Hold, or they'd have fabrics rotting and mould on the walls during the long, cold winter. She'd have to remind Halina that it was time to grab every fine day available and start airing everything out before it was packed away for the cold months; and it was probably time that she and old Palla, the head cook, started to go through the winter stores. She needed to check with Healer Vidan about _his_ supplies, because a lack of appropriate remedies for coughs and fevers would be drastic; and they'd need to have everything ready in case of a more severe accident in ice or snow. After the Autumn Gather winter always seemed to race down on Lemos; the responsible members of the Hold should have purchased everything necessary over the last three days, but there was always something that they couldn't get enough of; or forgot; or that Vidan needed urgently from his own Crafthall; and all too often it was something which was too big a load to be delivered by the Runners and she would have to organise with Galen and Olman to send someone with a cart to find the elusive item; and _that_ meant that Olman or one of the trusted men who would lead the expedition would have to calculate a safe route - with one eye always on the thread timetables - within the tiny window of perhaps a month and a half before snowfall closed the passes. Without input from the Weyr.

Fani sighed. Benden Weyr… she'd never actually been there. She'd lived at Igen Hold as a girl, where her uncle, the Lord Holder, was on good terms with his Weyrbound leaders, but even then there had been no reason for the delicate ivory-skinned child she had been to be given a ride on dragonback and to see the place where the dragons lived. Now she found herself intensely curious - and desperately worried - about what sort of place Benden Weyr might be. Was it friendly? Was it tolerant? Would a girl who'd never before had the chance to make friends and interact with strangers be _happy_ there?

She shook herself briskly, smoothing down the skirt of her dark berry coloured dress, and walked smartly back to her own room, dispatching the giggling girls on the stairs to run round the Hold closing the shutters against the drifting rain. A drudge, filthy hair bundled up in a grimy and ragged headscarf, drifted past her, sniffing furiously as she refilled the glow baskets, and Fani sighed. Enclosed in the Hold throughout the winter months, both Holders and drudges lived in such close proximity that infections were impossible to contain. She made a mental note to remind Halina to make sure that all the drudges had enough winter clothes.

Berna was walking up and down with Egan in her arms, and the child was whimpering and grizzling pitifully. Fani hurried to take him from the tall, gaunt nurse, hoisting her son up onto her shoulder and rubbing his back gently. He calmed slightly in his mother's arms.

'He's missing his sister,' Berna said, dourly. 'Ah, she's done wrong by us, my lady, like her mother before her. Things is all wrong in this Hold. It's the Blood leaving us.'

'Berna!' Fani was shocked. 'Katriel has done no harm to this Hold.' And yet - there _was_ something wrong. The whole Hold seemed to reflect the leaden sky - everyone Fani spoke to seemed distracted and slow. The kitchen drudges were smarting under the lash of usually even-tempered Palla's suddenly sharp tongue; Fani had met no less than three children sent running to fetch items Tercel had inexplicably forgotten to take to his lesson; nibblers or some similar pest had found their way into a storeroom that Fani had thought was filled and ready for winter; the bolt of cloth Halina had bought to cover furniture across the Hold had turned out to have an ugly wrench, threads awry and pulling loose, two armlengths in, just beyond the point that the Headwoman had unrolled it to as she inspected it; everything seemed just slightly off.

'Ah, that's as may be.' Berna was permanently glum, but she seemed to be revelling in current events in her own miserable fashion. 'I don't suppose anyone has seen fit to inform you, my lady, that no one has seen Lord Galen this morning?'

'I dare say they realised that I am uninterested in gossip,' Fani said, stiffly. She knew that already. That was another thing wrong in the Hold - a huge one. Olman was making his planting plans alone, and it was enough to make even the solid steward nervous; because he was Galen's most important retainer and closest ally, but he had _never_ made an important decision about Lemos. Galen was _always_ there; he did everything himself and discussed his decisions and orders with nobody.

But Galen, she was fairly sure, was in the Hold somewhere.

Katriel wasn't.

Fani had searched everywhere, first discreetly and then with increasing panic. She'd checked all the places that Kat might be, and then all the places she thought Kat wouldn't be, and then all the places that Kat would never go, and she hadn't found the girl anywhere. And Kat's bed hadn't been slept in. Fani had been forced, eventually, to realise that her stepdaughter was nowhere in the Hold - and almost at once had understood where she must be.

She didn't know how the knowledge had spread around the Hold. She supposed it was inevitable. By the time Katriel had been missing for twenty hours, everyone in the Hold seemed to be whispering about how the Lord's daughter had followed her flighty mother - had run off with the dragonriders -

Fani shut her eyes, hugging Egan's warm weight to her. She needed the fragile comfort her son could give her. And now Galen had disappeared. Everyone knew the events had to be connected - she wouldn't even have liked to bet that others weren't making the same wild and sensational generalisations as Berna, laying every tiny mishap in Lemos on Katriel's shoulders. But something _had_ gone wrong, must have, and Fani knew that she was going to have to pull herself together and go and talk to people calmly and gently and try and make them behave more reasonably. In particular, she had to find Galen. And she was just too tired and sad to try.

Fani felt tears welling up in her eyes, and hid her face in Egan's hair. Oh Kat, she thought. Couldn't you even have said goodbye?

* * *

'Haven't you ever done this before?' the Headwoman demanded, snatching knife and tubers from Kat's hands. 'Like this, see? You're throwing away half the flesh with the skin!' She expertly skimmed the surface off the tuber and tossed the skin into the bucket standing ready on the table, then sliced the root and dropped it into the pan of water standing nearby. Sure enough, her prepared tuber was almost twice the size of Kat's. She dropped the knife on the table and bustled away again, muttering to herself, 'Candidates! I ask you!'

Kat stared unhappily after her, diplomatically keeping the scowl off her face. She'd only been introduced to Lena the previous night, but she'd rapidly decided that Benden Weyr's Headwoman was a tyrant. The woman was immensely overweight, rolls of fat bulging over her belt, but above her pale and flabby face was a pinned-up pile of truly astonishing golden curls. Kat couldn't understand why so many of the tall and handsome dragonriders who seemed to be perpetually swinging in and out of the room would slip an arm around Lena's waist or peck her cheek as they passed.

Dubiously she picked up the knife, lifted another tuber from the dauntingly large pile in front of her, and very carefully and slowly started to peel the root as close to the skin as she could.

'You really have never done this before!' Her neighbour, a white-skinned girl with short black hair, looked over at Kat's work. Her own pile of tubers was almost gone, and she was skinning another root swiftly and competently as she spoke. 'Want me to help you? I'm Ferrin. I do this kind of chore at home all the time.'

'Lady Katriel of Lemos.' Kat wasn't sure what to make of this cheerfully informal character, and she could hear that her own response was stiff. 'I can manage fine by myself, thank you.'

Ferrin shrugged, dark glossy wings of hair swinging forwards around her face. 'Suit yourself. But we have lessons this afternoon; you don't want to be late for that.'

'Thank you.' With great concentration Kat finished peeling her tuber, and then added belatedly, 'So - where do you come from?'

'Harlin Hold, it's called. It's in Ruatha.' Ferrin shrugged. 'It's the back end of nowhere. I'm not going home even if I don't Impress.'

Kat wasn't sure how to respond. She could have told Ferrin that she too wouldn't be going back - maybe this strange girl would even laugh if Kat explained that she'd run away - but it seemed disrespectful and undignified to talk about her family and home like that. She said awkwardly, 'Uh-huh,' and watched Ferrin's knife flashing as the other girl's white fingers turned the tuber over, lifting an even strip of the rough brown skin that dropped in a long curl onto the stained stone table top.

'Of course, Ma was quite happy to see me go,' Ferrin carried on. 'Harlin's such a small Hold that I was bound to marry away anyway, so she was never going to get to keep me, and if I do happen to Impress that brings them honour, of course. And I've three sisters, so it takes the pressure off a bit if I leave.'

Kat blinked. The black-haired girl seemed quite cheerful about the idea that she wasn't really wanted at home. She didn't know what to say to Ferrin; she applied herself to her task as the other girl sliced her last tuber into pieces, threw them into the pan, and dusted her hands off, smiling. 'There! All done. Are you sure that you don't want some help?'

Actually, Kat would vastly prefer to be left alone. 'No, thank you.'

'If you say so. See you later, then.' Ferrin gave up on her and left.

* * *

By the time Kat had finished she was sure she would never be able to eat a tuber again - not even the way old Palla did them, roasted golden-brown, fluffy and airy-light - and her thumb was sore and red where she'd been pressing on the knife back for more than an hour. She sucked it as she headed back into the Weyr's corridors. It was probably time she headed towards the schoolroom to meet the other candidates. She knew where that was - J'mat had thoughtfully pointed out a couple of important places before he dropped her off at the candidate barracks last night - but the only way that she knew to get there was to go back up to the main dining cavern and then out through there towards the open Weyr bowl. There _must_ be a faster way; but Kat was finding it more disorienting than she'd have believed possible to negotiate Benden's maze of corridors. She laughed at herself for it - wasn't Lemos Hold built in exactly the same thread-proof style? - but she'd grown up in Lemos' vastness, and every twist of the passageways there was as familiar to her as the back of her hand, while Benden was unknown and threatening. For the time being, she was going to have to be content with taking the easy and obvious routes, even if that meant walking further than necessary to her destination.

Benden's informal lunch period was just finishing; as Kat came tentatively into the main hall she was caught up in a swarm of weyrbrats, released from their drilling with the Weyrsinger, who were dashing recklessly into the cavern to grab themselves some food before it was all eaten or cleared away. They surged around Kat, who found herself shoved and jostled by the small boys and retreated against the wall, shocked and horrified. Until she came to the Weyr she hadn't even noticed how everyone at Lemos treated her respectfully, stepping aside to let her pass and clearing things out of her path. Here she didn't stand out at all. Even her clothing was plain and second-hand; Dramma, the Headwoman's wide-cheeked second, had found her a blouse and skirt suitable to wear here. Kat was afraid that her best azure-blue brocade gown had been irretrievably crumpled and stained by her first - petrifying, _amazing_ - dragonback flight. And now, finally, Kat was learning why people desired rank and privilege - and realising that she had liked it too.

It left a bitter taste in her mouth; she blinked, and hurried onwards to the classroom. It was almost full already, and Kat paused in the doorway, hesitant. There were ten other girls, candidates for the queen egg, and they seemed to have formed themselves into a group already. They were sitting together in one corner of the room; the boys were scattered in loose groups. Kat looked round. People were watching her to see where she chose to sit; she swallowed, lifted her chin and walked over to an empty bench at the front, placing herself in the exact centre and not looking round to see how people reacted.

* * *

The candidates were sent to their rooms relatively early in the evening, and Kat was profoundly grateful. She didn't think she'd ever worked so hard in her life at lessons, and she'd never _had_ chores. Her feet, hands and brain were all sore and aching. She was exhausted; but the other girls all seemed to be energetic still; it was clear that they were going to chatter.

Kat lay on the narrow cot, almost crying with frustration. She'd had enough trouble sleeping the previous night. The bed was too hard, and the room was full of the noise of breathing, muttering, the occasional quiet snore. Kat had never shared a bedroom; and she found herself lying awkwardly, wanting to shift around and roll over, but not wanting to wake any of the strange girls she'd been thrown in with. And they were so casual about changing clothes in front of each other! Kat had found herself awkwardly scrambling into her borrowed clothes behind a blanket, at the same time trying not to be too obvious about covering herself up in case they thought she was prudish or naïve.

After a few seconds she knew that there wasn't a chance she was going to sleep while they were talking, so Kat rolled over onto her stomach and looked unhappily over at the other girls. Only about half of them were even changed for bed; one girl, a pretty brunette called Ivenna, had brought a case of cosmetics from home, and three of the candidates were lounged on her bed, playing with the eye-paints.

'So,' giggled another girl, peering intently into the little polished silver mirror, 'how do I look? Mwah!' She made kissing motions at her reflection.

'Be-yootiful, Della,' drawled a tall, auburn-maned beauty that Kat thought she'd heard called Ola. 'Is it for anyone special?'

Della giggled again, and relinquished the mirror back into its owner's hand. 'Well, no,' she said, coyly, 'but some of those dragonriders are _dreamy!_ F'ran, for instance. Wouldn't mind a piece of him!'

'Ew!' Plump little Ginna, lying on her own bed nearby, bounced upright. 'He's _old_.'

'So? I like them with experience. And he's not _that_ old.'

'Yeah, but he _is_ taken.' Tyrel was skinny and dark-haired, and Kat had gathered from her generally authoritative stance on almost everything that she was weyrbred. 'He's with Reyna.'

'So?' Della raised her blonde eyebrows suggestively.

'Have some morals,' Ola suggested in her lazy drawl. 'There are plenty of available, good-looking guys a few turns older than us. I heard there's a massive party after the Hatching. I'm thinking of trying for A'din.'

'Why wait for the party?' Ferrin, Kat's acquaintance of the afternoon, sounded distinctly unimpressed with the conversation. 'He was drooling enough at dinner. So were you.'

Della and little Ginna giggled, and Ola tossed her hair. 'So who are you after then, Miss Superior?'

'I came here so my life wouldn't hinge on who I married,' Ferrin pointed out. 'I plan to make the most of all the chances I've got now.'

'Yeah, well, so do we!' Della quipped, and Ferrin reluctantly laughed along with the other girls.

'I think Tarran's cute,' another girl admitted shyly. Kat didn't know her name; she had very fine hair that drifted around her head like pale sea-foam.

Tyrel shook her head at once. 'Uh-uh. Bad choice.'

'Why not?' Ginna demanded. 'Cassy is right. He is quite good-looking.'

'Yeah, but he's a candidate. Two thirds of those boys will be on their way home in a couple of sevendays.'

There was an awkward pause. Hovering behind that sentence was the memory that all but one of them would also be walking off the sands empty handed. The air of jollity and shared gossip that filled the room had a false ring to Kat's ears.

'So,' Ivenna said brightly, looking around from where she was perched on the floor, packing away her cosmetics. 'Esla, you haven't been saying anything. Anyone caught your eye?'

There was a pause. The tall, bony girl Ivenna appeared to be addressing was lying back on her bed with a glow held in one hand and a piece of tanned hide in the other, reading intently. Ferrin, on the next bed, leaned over to wave a hand between the document and the girl's eyes. 'Esla? Hello?'

'Sorry?' She blinked and looked up. 'Did you say something?' The girls laughed good-naturedly.

'Sorry,' Ivenna laughed. 'Didn't mean to disturb you. We were asking if you think any of the guys around here is handsome.'

Esla screwed up her eyes, thinking, then shrugged. 'I haven't noticed.'

Della hooted with laughter. 'Come on, girl! About time you looked at something that isn't written down.'

'Yes, and made them look at you,' Ola agreed, surveying Esla's face with her eyes half shut. 'You could be very striking if you took care of your appearance. Good cheekbones. Of course, we'd have to do something about your clothing, but with Ivenna's help…'

Esla, looking alarmed, blinked, muttered, 'Thanks,' and retreated again behind her roll of hide, causing another ripple of laughter.

'I think Manda and Resli have dropped off,' Ginna said. She was lying on her stomach on her bed, round face propped up in her hands, and one leg kicking idly in the air behind her. 'So doesn't that just leave -' She half rolled over to look at Kat.

Kat, listening in horror and embarrassment, was too slow to drop her head and pretend to be asleep; she felt the blush rushing across her face and scrambled rapidly to her feet. 'I - uh - I have to go,' she improvised. 'I'll - um, I'll be back in a minute.' She dashed from the room, hearing the giggles behind her, and stopped in the corridor outside the door. Her bare feet were standing on smooth, cold stone, and they were slowly turning to blocks of ice. Kat shivered.

'Ooh, _she_ obviously has a favourite,' Della giggled. Kat could hear her faintly through the hide screening the doorway, and blushed again, pressing her cold hands against her cheeks.

Ola snorted. 'No, Lady Katriel is just too lofty to gossip with us mere mortals.'

'Do you think so?'

'She doesn't seem very friendly,' Ginna said, critically. Kat could picture the smaller girl's face pink with concentration.

'I don't know.' Tyrel sounded more cautious. 'Ferrin, you had chores with her, didn't you? What did you think?'

'I'm not sure.' Ferrin spoke slowly, and seemed reluctant to be drawn. 'She didn't talk to me very much. She hasn't done much household stuff, but she didn't want me to help her.'

'See? My point.' Ola was satisfied. 'Same way she wouldn't sit with any of us in class. She's just spoilt and she thinks she's _so_ much better than us. I'm not planning to bother with her any more.' There were a couple of murmurs of agreement.

Kat sighed silently and leant against the freezing stone wall. I don't fit in here, she thought, miserably. I _don't_ think I'm better than them - I really don't - but I just have no idea to behave like that. I mean, how _can_ they chatter away like that? She shuddered. It's so - giggly, and silly and undignified. And - embarrassing and wrong. Not to mention indiscreet! And I don't understand the lessons, and I can't do the chores, and -

She broke off frustrated, and rubbed her eyes, inexplicably filling with tears. She was so, so tired, and she'd dreamed so much of Benden Weyr and of riding a great dragon, and here she was lonely and freezing. In the morning - or next sevenday at least, when she began to get the hang of things here - she'd doubtless remember all the excellent reasons that she chose to come to the Weyr, but right at the moment Lemos Hold didn't even seem so bad. At least she'd been able to sleep there!

But she couldn't go back. She'd burnt her bridges. Kat pressed her fists into her eyes in desperation. Why hadn't she just done what Fani said, and _talked_ to him? Then she could have gone back, if she couldn't bear this any more. But she had run away, in desperation, and now she had no option left except to see this through.

It was like a lead weight in her stomach. I only had to tell him! Just - two sentences, that would have been enough. But no. I couldn't do it. I just ran straight to the dragonriders!

I am such a coward.

* * *

**Please review!**


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: Pern****and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Sorry, sorry, sorry! I'm afraid there's no excuse; this chapter just seemed to not get written and not get written and not get written. I swear that I will try to do better! In mitigation, it is a really long one - and contains some interesting revelations…**

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* * *

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Arrin tugged the last knot tight and coiled the loose end of the cord, tucking it down inside the edge of the cart. 'All right!' he called forwards, raising an arm so that Don in the driving seat could see him, and stepping away. 'Try that!'

Don nodded acknowledgement, turned away and urged the runner forwards, jerking the loaded cart into motion. Arrin held his breath; but almost at once he heard Falen, invisible to him behind the vehicle, shouting, 'No! Hold it!'

Don checked the runner and Arrin sighed. 'What's wrong this time?' They'd been trying to pack and balance the cart satisfactorily since morning; it was worth the effort, since most of the goods wouldn't be unpacked until they arrived at their final destination.

'Not too serious.' Falen's head appeared as he hoisted himself up onto the cart. 'Just a bit loose here.' He wasn't paying much attention to Arrin. He looked back down the way he'd come and pointed at something out of Arrin's sight. 'Here, Rey, pull there will you… thanks.' Falen shoved at an irregular lump under the canvas cover, and exclaimed happily when it slid and settled into a more even position. 'Right. Tighten up everywhere?' He slid back down from his precarious perch, and Arrin wrapped the rough cord around his hand and dragged the last bit of slack out of it so that the load was held firmly down by the criss-crossing ropes.

Then he walked round to join Falen and Rey. 'Right. Can we go now? You know we've got to make the pass in less than two stages to reach the threadshelter there before fall.'

One of the thin, fair brothers - Falen, the younger, more agile one - smiled. 'Don't worry. We'll make it.'

Arrin laughed. 'Yeah, we've got plenty of time, but you might notice that everyone else left hours ago.'

'Well, I think someone's coming to tell us it's time we were out too,' Rey, the quieter brother, observed. He nodded back up at Lemos Hold, where two figures were picking their way down the debris strewn road to reach them.

'Nah, it's a woman,' Falen said, watching the slim, elegant person turn her head briefly to her short, chubby companion. 'They wouldn't send her to get rid of us.'

'She's a looker.' Don, the driver, had swung himself down to join his companions, holding onto the reins with one hand. He whistled appreciatively. 'Bet she's someone you know, Arrin, you sly dog.'

She was. Arrin recognised the figure walking towards them, and his jaw dropped open. 'Hey, it's - now look, that's my sister-in-law, and she's a real lady, she doesn't need to hear your vulgarity, any of you. Get moving; I'll catch up in just a minute.'

'Ah, too bad, Arrin,' Don teased. 'You seem to be related to all the prettiest ones.'

Falen snorted. 'Didn't stop you finding some fun.'

Don grinned and flicked deep brown hair out of his eyes. 'Jealous?'

'Hardly.'

'Shut up and move,' Arrin interrupted. He pushed Don back towards the cart and then set off himself at a run back up the road towards the Hold and the approaching figures. His companions looked at one another, startled. _That_ wasn't like Arrin; generally he was the most easy-going and fun-loving of any of them.

'Come on,' Rey said, quietly, and they turned away. Don set the runner into motion, and the brothers trudged along behind the cart. Falen was unable to resist one last glance back; he saw Arrin bend down to give the pretty dark woman a formal kiss on the cheek; and then his brother tugged his arm and he guiltily switched his gaze back to the front.

* * *

The turns hadn't changed Arrin, Fani thought; he was all charm. He kissed her lightly and flashed her a dazzling smile. 'Fani! How did you find me?'

She smiled back, unruffled. 'Good morning, Arrin. I'm sorry I didn't know you were here earlier; you should have come over.'

Arrin blinked. 'Not likely! Did Kat tell you I was here? She didn't get into trouble, did she? I was hoping she'd come see me again before I left, and there's been no sign…'

Fani shook her head, and gestured at the boy with her; a round, red-faced person, Arrin saw, who had drifted away from them and seemed to be engaged in speculative study of the ground, poking at the earth with the toe of his boot. 'Apprentice Dannen thought that I should know.'

'Of course!' Arrin remembered. 'The boy who delivered the note for me. The Harper boy.' He flashed a glance over at the seemingly impervious apprentice; casually, and yet Fani saw the glint of his dark eyes and she was sure that Arrin wouldn't mistake Dannen again. Just as swiftly, Arrin turned back to her. 'But Kat - she's all right, you said?'

Fani made a little uncertain movement of her hands. 'I hope so, Arrin. She's - she's actually gone to Benden Weyr as a candidate.'

Arrin stared; and then his handsome, golden-skinned face lit up. 'She did? That's fantastic! It's the right sort of thing for Kat; she always was adventurous. But Fani, how did she _possibly_ persuade him? I never thought she'd even ask.'

'She didn't,' Fani said, and she could hear the hint of dryness creeping into her words and struggled to suppress it and continue calmly, 'Arrin, she ran away.'

'Good for her!' Arrin laughed, incredulous and joyful. 'I thought she was too scared; I was feeling so bad, I thought I'd left her in there for so long her spirit was going. But that's great! She's broken out; she'll find her own way now.' That obviously reminded him of his own new commitments, and he glanced after his companions and the cart. 'And actually Fani, I really have to go; and I can do that with a clear conscience, now.'

Fani surprised herself with a little rush of anger; she clenched her fists and felt the blood rushing into her face and staining her ivory skin pink. '_Good for her?_ You make a good pair! Does _neither_ of you have the slightest sense of responsibility?'

Arrin jerked his head back round to face her, astonished. 'What?'

Fani shut her eyes briefly. 'I'm sorry. Of course you're entitled to your own life, Arrin, and so's Kat; but - oh, don't you even think about what you're doing to everyone else?'

'Oh.' Arrin reached out to her. 'Fani, I'm sorry - you're all alone now, aren't you?'

'No!' Fani's grasp on her temper slipped again. 'Arrin, I'm married, remember? I'm not alone. This is not about me. This is about Galen.'

'Then it's not about me,' Arrin said easily.

Fani stared at him, feeling her skin blanch. How could he say it so - casually? Not defiantly, not as though he was trying to convince himself or anyone else, just - as if it was true. 'Arrin?' she asked, her voice small. 'He's your brother.'

'So?'

She blinked at him, and he realised that she didn't understand. 'I mean - yes, we have the same parents, Fani, but what _you_ mean is, "he's my brother, and I love him really". That's what you want, isn't it? But I don't.'

Again, it was the bland statement of fact that choked her up. She lifted her head to look at him, huge dark eyes glittering with tears, and said quietly, 'So you won't come back. Even for a visit, just to prove to him that there's no reason you can't be family _and_ have your own life?'

He said nothing. Fani tried one last time. 'Arrin - he _needs_ you. He's never been the same. First Calantha, and then you, and now Kat, Arrin, it will kill him. I don't think he's ever stopped loving any of you. Not for a moment. Please, Arrin. _Please_.' To her horror, her voice cracked on the final word and she dropped her face into her hands, straining to get herself back under control.

She heard Arrin move, and then he wrapped his arms around her, rocking her gently. 'Fani, it's all right, it's all right.'

She shook her head wordlessly, still fighting to still the shuddering sobs wrenching through her throat. She almost never remembered that she was actually younger than Arrin; but she felt it now.

He waited until she calmed a little and then released her, holding her shoulders lightly. 'Fani, I know that you want things to be right and good, but there's some problems you're never going to be able to solve. Galen's pushed us away - he's killed this family already. We don't love him; no one does. And I have to go. Be well, Fani, and don't worry about him. You have _too_ much sense of duty.'

He kissed her forehead and swung away down the road. Dumbly, Fani watched him go; at first in silence, and then she heard the faint thread of a whistled melody floating back to her, and the noise jolted her back out of her shocked stupor and into anger. 'No, Arrin! That is _not_ the reason!'

He was too far away to hear her, marching lightly after his friends into the distance, and Fani sighed. That was Arrin; charming, friendly, dashing, caring, certain - and utterly thoughtless. Of course he didn't understand.

And her last hope had just run out.

* * *

Kat paused at the door of the classroom to brush her skirts straight. Today she was going to get this right. Marching straight in had obviously been wrong; she wouldn't do that again.

She took a deep breath, lifted the curtain, and stepped inside.

She was luckier today; she was earlier than the Candidate Master, and those people who had already arrived were grouped more casually, chattering and shifting around. Kat relaxed slightly once it was obvious that no one was looking at her, and looked around for somewhere to sit. She wanted to try and sit _with_ someone; surely that would be perceived as more friendly? But the five girls who had already arrived were huddled in a tight cluster, whispering animatedly. Kat took a couple of steps towards them, but she didn't think that she could break into that conversation.

She scanned the room again. A number of boys were lounging in one corner with their feet up on the furniture; a boisterous group in the centre of the room were teasing and mock-fighting; and seated quietly on the outskirts, a vaguely familiar thin brown-haired boy who looked round, met her eyes, and smiled.

Kat stared, disbelieving, her heart suddenly jumping hopefully into her mouth. Then her legs lurched into motion and she hurried over and took the seat next to the boy. 'Hello,' she offered, uncertainly.

'Hey,' he said. He seemed a bit younger than her, quiet-voiced and nondescript until Kat looked at his face and found herself blinking with surprise at his eyes; they were distinctly different colours, one blue and one green. 'You're Katriel, aren't you? I don't care what they say about you, J'mat says you're all right and that's good enough for me.'

She blinked, unaccountably touched by his sincere declaration, and felt that she ought to thank him, only she didn't know how. 'Kat. I'm Kat. And you're -?' She hesitated, hoping that he would fill in the gap, but then her memory finally latched onto why he had seemed familiar when she'd first seen him. 'You're J'mat's brother!'

'Jasor.' He smiled at her, and then turned his attention to the Candidate Master who had just walked into the room, frowning the rowdiest of the boys into silence. Kat didn't feel snubbed. It seemed more as though Jasor was someone who never used a large number of words. She watched him for a moment longer; yes, Jasor was thinner and fairer, but now that she knew she could see the faint resemblance between him and J'mat. And J'mat she'd thought she could have been friends with…

Kat turned back to the front of the class room, a tiny flicker of hope bubbling in her stomach.

She watched Jasor out of the corner of her eye for the whole lesson. He seemed unaware of her scrutiny; he was watching the Candidate Master seriously, turning his head whenever anyone else spoke or asked a question, listening intently to everything that was said. She _liked_ him; something about his simplicity and concentration was both soothing and appealing.

After the lesson she hesitated and then followed Jasor closely as he wandered out into the Weyr bowl. He didn't say anything; but just when she wondered if she was irritating him by tagging along the younger boy half turned his head to give her a brief smile. 'Want to go up to the watch platform?'

Kat's instinct was to refuse; she was exhausted, both mentally and physically drained, and she really wanted nothing more than just to go and collapse into bed. But on the other hand - it was barely evening, the autumn sky still cerulean blue, and none of the other candidates looked like they were thinking of turning in yet. And was she going to cower and hide in the candidate dormitories whenever she didn't have to be anywhere else?

No. She might be a coward, but she wasn't that bad. And she _wanted_ to learn her way about the Weyr. 'Yes. Where's that?'

Jasor grinned. 'Up.'

* * *

Kat panted up the final staircase and threw herself onto the rocky ground; not caring whether her clothes would get dusty or creased. 'You could have warned me!' she gasped. If she'd felt any restraint around Jasor it had vanished by the time he led her up the third or fourth set of narrow stone stairs. Her hair was straggling down across her shoulders and her skirts were picking up dust and worn patches; it was hard to stand on her dignity.

'I did,' he protested mildly, stepping across her prone form. 'I told you it was up.'

She glared up at the boy. 'Not that far, though!'

'Is there a problem?' an amused voice enquired. Kat stiffened in shock and rolled over, her hip bones pressing uncomfortably against the rock floor.

'No, we're fine,' Jasor said, calmly. 'Is it all right if we stay up here for a bit?'

The person snorted. 'Will you listen if I say no? Here.' He reached a hand down to Kat.

'Thanks. J'mat!'

He laughed, and pulled her upright. 'That's my name. How are you doing?'

'Well -' Kat broke off, catching her breath. Looming over J'mat's shoulder out of the darkness was Hideth's head, tilted on one side so that the brown could examine her curiously with one large, whirling eye. 'Hello, Hideth,' she said, cautiously.

A veined eyelid closed over the bright eye as Hideth blinked slowly, and then the dragon gently extended his sinuous neck and nudged Kat gently with his muzzle. She gasped, and then gave a breathless little laugh.

'Scratch his eyebrow ridge,' J'mat advised. 'Fastest way to make any dragon your slave for life.'

'Are you sure?' Tentatively, Kat reached out and laid her hand on the bony ridge above Hideth's eye, then jerked her hand away. 'It's so soft!' The dragon's hide was supple and warm to her touch as she stretched out her fingers with more confidence. She could feel how _alive_ Hideth was, how muscles under his skin twitched away under her hand as she scratched him gently.

Hideth crooned, a surprisingly high note for such a massive animal, and half closed his eyes, leaning into her hand, and Kat laughed. J'mat grinned too, slapping Hideth's nose lightly. 'Behave yourself.'

'Huh?' Kat glanced at the young dragonrider, questioningly, and then looked back at Hideth in time to catch the brown flicking a sly, intelligent glance up at her from his half-lidded eyes. Kat blinked, and then blushed. She'd been fooled again into thinking of the dragon as an animal.

Hideth grinned at her, the corners of his mouth rolling back, and then leaned over to Jasor, who rubbed the brown's nose affectionately.

Kat looked away from them as J'mat said, 'You've got a lot better around dragons, anyway.'

Kat laughed. 'I've had to! Either that or go mad with fear. But here other people just treat them like part of the scenery, and that makes it a lot easier to accept them.'

'You're getting used to it, then?'

Kat frowned, weighing her words. She didn't want to lie to J'mat; he deserved more than that. 'I - yes, I think so. I've only been here a couple of days, of course, and it is - it's incredible how _much_ different it is, but I - yes, I'm beginning to get used to it, I think.' She grinned, thinking of Hideth, and added, 'I _definitely_ want to ride a dragon. And I like Jasor.'

'Yeah, he's all right.' She could hear the pride in J'mat's voice. 'He's a smart brat. You'll get to like Benden, you know, especially if - when - you Impress. There's lots of good people here, and it's the most exciting place to be. It'd suit you.' He stopped and frowned. 'At least, I thought it would. But I suppose that I never really knew you at all, did I?'

Kat looked up at him quickly. 'I'm sorry about that. Lying to you, I mean. I -' She shrugged. 'If it helps, at the time I thought that you were the only one who did get to know _me_. I thought that was me, the fun-loving, dancing, carefree one. The stiff and silent Lord Holder's daughter, that was just an act, it wasn't real. But now I find out that I've been acting that so long it _is_ real, and I don't know if I can get free of it.'

'You will,' said J'mat, firmly. 'C'mon, Katriel. You will!'

She smiled. 'Kat. Call me Kat. I hope you're right. I - I talked about going mad with fear, didn't I? I think that happened to me before, almost. I - I was so scared, all the time, of everything, and there wasn't any _reason_ for it. And - everything I did, everything I said, everything I _thought_, I was thinking about him all the time underneath it and worrying about what his reaction would be, even what he'd think about it. And I still don't know why. Unless it was that back at Lemos the perspective was all wrong. He wasn't just another person, another piece of my life, he was at the centre of everything, for everyone. It just -' She threw up her hands helplessly, gazing out across the Weyr. The Dawn Sisters, the only stars yet visible in the periwinkle dusk, were blazing on the horizon to her left, and the glaring eye of the Red Star winking balefully from her right. There were a pair of dragons playing in the air, flirting with the breeze and soaring apart and together, up and down and around in intricate, joyful patterns. 'You know I couldn't even bring myself to tell him that I was leaving? I don't know why. It just looks so ridiculous from here. But I couldn't do it. I was too afraid. So I ran away.'

'I'm not surprised!' J'mat was indignant and Hideth growled softly. 'You had a right, Kat, by the sound of it that place was killing you! And I can see why everyone would be frightened of someone who - uh, frightened of him, if that's what he did to you.'

Kat turned to look at him suspiciously. She'd caught his hasty correction. 'Someone who what, J'mat?'

'Oh, no, don't worry about that,' the young brownrider said, hastily. 'It's just that some of the old gossips have been talking since we got back from Lemos - it's just a stupid rumour, it's nonsense, it can't possibly be true -'

'J'mat,' Kat said, warningly. '_What_ is this stupid rumour that can't possibly be true?'

'It's nothing - really -'

'People have been saying,' Jasor cut in quietly, 'that Lord Galen killed I'den.'

Kat stilled, her brain racing, trying to take that in. 'I'den's the one who took my mother?'

'Calantha. Yes. Among other things.' Now that the truth had come out, J'mat seemed resigned to giving her the whole story, although Kat noted with a corner of her brain that Hideth was watching her very carefully.

'So what happened? They duelled? I've never heard -'

J'mat winced and shook his head. 'Dragonriders don't duel.'

'So, what -?' Kat was confused.

'The _rumour_ is,' J'mat said unhappily, 'that it was murder.'

Kat swallowed, and then blinked again. 'Wait. That's stupid. Murder's illegal, and this is a _dragonrider_ we're talking about. He'd have been caught - the council of Lords Holders would've punished him -'

'Exactly,' said J'mat, firmly. 'Which is why I told you it's nonsense and not to worry about it.'

Kat glanced at him sideways. She still had a sense that he was keeping something back. Acting on instinct, she looked at Jasor, lifting her eyebrows questioningly.

'I'den's body was found at the bottom of a ravine on Lemos land,' the younger boy said, softly. 'His wing second said that he had been going to meet Lord Galen. But there was no evidence to show how he met his death, and if it _wasn't_ an accident then there weren't grounds for accusing anybody specific. The Weyr talked, of course, but by all accounts I'den was no loss, so the speculation died away with time.'

J'mat looked at his brother in surprise. 'Where did you learn all of that? You were just a baby!'

'I listen to people,' Jasor pointed out, patiently.

Kat let them bicker. She felt very strange, as if something were tugging at her insides. No. It was stupid. It _was_ stupid. It was just gossip, there was no evidence, and her father _wouldn't_ do that. No. Not the stone. He wouldn't.

Like a blow to her head she recalled with striking clarity her father as she'd seen him on the last morning; facing a dragonrider, not stone at all but alive with venom and bile and hatred, vicious and dangerous.

He wouldn't. Would he?

* * *

Fani's eyes stung with unshed tears as she stood in the passageway, the strip of brightly embroidered material in her hands. She'd spotted it lying in the corner and picked it up curiously, wondering what it was. Then, as soon as she got a good look at the pattern of white-petalled flowers against the azure blue material, she'd realised: it was a hair band. Kat's. That would explain how it came to be lying discarded on the floor; Kat could never stay tidy.

It was the girl's favourite one. Fani had seen her fastening it carefully over her hair on her last day at the Hold. She tightened her hand around the flimsy strip of fabric and for a brief moment allowed her face to contort miserably. She could see Kat in her mind's eye; lively and golden and passionate. She hoped Kat was still like that. Her stepdaughter had only been gone two days, and already she seemed as far away as if she had belonged to a different life.

Fani blinked back the burning in her eyes, smoothed down her skirt and brushed a few wisps of hair back from her face. She would put Kat's hair band away in its proper place, and hope for the chance to return it some day.

Kat's bedroom was unnaturally neat; Fani and Berna had always tidied it periodically, but the girl had always managed to strew her belongings across the room. Now it felt like the home of a ghost, and Fani had to swallow hard as she lifted aside the curtain and let the glowlight into the little room. Then she stopped uncertainly; the room wasn't empty.

Standing motionless in the darkness, Galen turned his head to face her. He saw a vision of dark, serene beauty poised in the doorway, lifting open the curtain so that light streamed in past her slender figure.

Fani saw a tall, harsh-featured man, his eyes black and expressionless. The glowlight struck him face on and uncompromisingly highlighted every mark of tiredness and grief scored across his features.

'Isn't it time you were going?' Galen asked.

Fani stepped forwards, reaching out towards him. She dexterously flipped open the room's glow basket with the other hand. 'What?'

Galen regarded her levelly, and his voice was unemotional. 'Everyone else has left. I've driven them away. You might as well go now. Still, you've been good at it, Fani. Not like - you've always been able to pretend you're content here.'

Fani smiled at him, sadly. 'Maybe I'm different to Kat or Arrin.' She used the names deliberately, but Galen didn't flinch or acknowledge them in any way. 'I chose to be here.'

Galen laughed, and the sound was grating and terrible. 'Don't worry, Fani. You thought I was the lesser evil, and now you know you were wrong. When I came to court you I saw the way your suitors looked at you, and the way you shrank away from them. I've always known why you married me.'

He didn't seem to notice the stillness that fell around them. Fani felt it; a hush, a moment of expectancy. And the irony of it was that it was probably too late; that now she finally found her time, it would mean nothing at all.

She lifted her head, took one courageous step forwards, and said, 'No.'

Galen didn't even seem to hear her. Fani repeated herself. 'No. You don't. You _don't_ know.'

He didn't look up; he wasn't curious. He didn't care. Fani felt her heart leaden and constrict, choking the breath out of her lungs. She clenched her hands into fists and said, 'Galen. When I met you, that was an awful part of my life. You're right. I hated Jeron and Danver and all the others. But you were so different. You were courteous and grave and so sad, and I loved you.'

The air seemed to thicken around her, and then all at once relax. It was said. She repeated wearily, 'I know you didn't feel the same, but I loved you.' She looked up into his face, all soulful beauty, and reached both hands towards him, as close to pleading as she could ever get. 'Galen, I love you. Can't we even try to make it work?'

Galen stood unmoving, still and hard as stone.


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: Pern and**** the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

* * *

Kat flung herself out of bed, hitting the floor with a distinct thud, and blundered her way out of the room, ignoring the startled and sleepy exclamations from the other girls. She found the hide curtain and almost fell through it into the corridor, doubled over and grasping at her chest, trying to breathe. It was dark, but she could feel the coolness and a draught moving around her. Plenty of space. Plenty of air. She laid her hands on her knees and concentrated on forcing the air in and out of her lungs, slowly breathing more normally and restoring her racing heartbeat to a more normal pace.

'Katriel? Are you all right?' The concerned voice was Ferrin's, but Kat thought the question inane. Something touched her arm; instinctively she jerked away from the touch, but Ferrin ignored her and slid her hand under Kat's elbow, helping her stand upright. The human contact was strangely warm and comforting, and after that initial moment of discomfort Kat was glad of it.

'Bad dream.' The confident pronouncement came in Ola's rich drawl. 'She's not going to get back to sleep for a while.'

'Well, come on, then.' The hushed whisper sounded like Tyrel. 'We'll wake everyone if we stand around talking here. They'll have _klah_ on the boil in the main hall, it's always there for the watch riders.'

Between them they shepherded Kat along the empty corridors and settled her onto a bench in the empty, cavernous dining hall. Passively letting them direct her, Kat leaned back against the edge of one of the long tables. She was shivering, she realised, and made a conscious effort to relax her muscles. It didn't help much.

Ola looked at her in dissatisfaction. 'Tyrel, get her that _klah_,' she ordered. 'The rest of you, wait here.' The auburn-haired girl crossed the hall and vanished back into the tunnel they'd come from.

Ferrin frowned after her. 'I wonder what she's after? Tyrel, pour those for everybody, won't you?' She sat down next to Kat and squeezed her hand again. Kat barely noticed. She shut her eyes, still deeply shaken. Trapped… She swallowed and blinked. No! she thought. I got away. I _left_. Trapped…

'Sure.' Tyrel had swiftly unstacked four beakers and was filling them with steaming liquid. She passed one to Kat, who wrapped her hands gratefully around the warm ceramic and let the steam wreath around her face. They'd picked a spot near the hearth, but the low-burning fire was merely flickering, throwing deep shadows into the corners, not really doing anything to heat the enormous room, and Kat was beginning to realise how very cold she was.

Ola's footsteps as she returned made everyone turn their heads, even Kat as she began to feel more normal. The tall, commanding girl had her arms full of blankets and began handing them out. 'Here, everyone wrap up.'

'Thanks, Ola,' Ferrin said. She reached out to help Kat, who instinctively pulled away. She wasn't a child; she didn't need Ferrin to tuck her in! Ferrin sat back, hurt, and Kat bit her lip. She kept doing this. She didn't _mean_ to alienate everyone.

Clumsily she tugged the heavy wool blanket around herself, noticing that her hands were still shaking. That would explain why Ferrin had thought she might want help. Feeling annoyed, and not quite sure if it was because of her undignified shivering or because of the way she kept making mistakes, she leant back again. She was much warmer now, wedged in between Tyrel's and Ferrin's blanket clad forms and sipping her _klah_, and she finally began to feel the tension ebbing out of her.

'Better?' Ola asked. She had settled herself on a bench opposite.

Kat nodded. 'Thanks,' she whispered.

'Do you often have nightmares?' Ferrin asked, quietly.

Instinctively, Kat drew herself up a little. 'No,' she said, and heard the cold finality of it.

She regretted it immediately. Ola rolled her eyes and Ferrin shrugged and turned slightly away from her. Kat blinked unhappily. She'd insulted the friendly raven-haired girl again. But Ferrin should never have _asked_ a question like that! It just wasn't the kind of thing you talked about!

Except that for Ferrin it was. Kat hunched up tighter in her blankets. No wonder she still felt constrained, like she'd never get away. Was it impossible for her to communicate with these girls? Ferrin was _nice_; Kat _wanted_ to make friends with her. But she _couldn't_ just - open up her life. She couldn't. It wasn't - _right_.

And it meant she couldn't really communicate with them at all. That was the real problem. Not that they, or Kat, were unpleasant or bad people, just because - because they didn't, _couldn't_, understand each other.

Hesitantly, Kat cleared her throat and said, 'Ferrin? I don't mean to upset you. I just - I don't really talk about personal things. I wasn't brought up that way.' She shrugged helplessly. 'I honestly - I just - I don't really understand the way you talk and the things you say to each other. I'm trying, I promise.'

Ferrin had turned her head back, her glossy hair swinging, and accepted the apology with a brisk nod and a smile that looked genuine, and Kat felt a little warm glow of relief.

On her other side, Tyrel said quietly, 'We should try to go back to bed. We're bound to be busy tomorrow. If you think you could sleep, Katriel?'

'Yes. Thank you.' Kat climbed to her feet, pleased to notice that her knees held her up firmly. 'Um - you should - would you call me Kat? All of you. I'm -' She shrugged weakly. 'Like I say, I'm trying to get used to this.'

Ola offered her a hand to help her up and said briskly, 'Tyrel, should we be washing these beakers? Could you do that? The blankets came off our beds, so everybody should take their own back. Ferrin, your bed is next to Tyrel, so if you take her blanket too.'

'Right.' Ferrin nodded, and Tyrel wriggled out of the blanket she was wrapped in and dropped it onto the table top, reaching out her hands to take everyone's cups. Kat looked at Ola, frowning as her brain finally threw up the oddity. These three had come to help her. Ferrin, brisk, capable and friendly, and Tyrel, sensible, thoughtful and knowing the ins and outs of the Weyr, she could understand. But Ola, commanding, beautiful and superior? She'd thought that Ola might be an enemy. She was _sure_ she'd heard the other girl saying she'd have nothing to do with Kat.

They were walking back towards the girl's room together as Ferrin draped the second blanket over her arm and hung around to wait for Tyrel, so Kat asked curiously, 'Why are you here, Ola? You don't even like me.' It wasn't even as if she was the Lord Holder's daughter here, to be flattered and cosseted; or as if she had the power to confer any sort of favour.

Ola's dark eyes flashed in her direction, and she shrugged. 'Doesn't matter how I feel. It's a Weyrwoman's duty and responsibility to look after everyone in the Weyr.'

'Oh.' Kat blinked. In Ola's self-assured drawl it sounded like the most natural thing in the world. 'But - you're not a Weyrwoman.'

The other girl lifted her chin, and Kat could see the dim light gleaming off her elegant and determined profile. 'Yet. But I know sharding well that the _only_ way to Impress a dragon is to deserve it.'

* * *

'Ow!' Kat hissed and yanked her hand away, cradling it against her chest.

Jasor lifted an eyebrow. 'That's only going to get worse if you don't let me treat it. The Healer said we should put this on.'

'I know. It just stings.' Kat sighed and held out her blistered and raw hands again. They were sitting cross-legged opposite each other on the rough grassy slope that led down towards the Weyr lake, and spread around Jasor on the grass were a couple of pots of salve and a small roll of bandage. She clenched her teeth as the younger boy again began to smooth the cream over her damaged skin. Her hands had been blistering since almost the first day at the Weyr, but today's hide-working exercise had been particularly tough on her soft skin. She'd been reluctant to mention it - no one else was complaining and she _wasn't_ going to be the weakling or the whiner - but it was impossible to treat and bandage her own hands efficiently, so she'd accepted Jasor's help.

'You've come to an agreement with the other girls,' Jasor said as he neatly tied off the second bandage. He tidied the healing supplies into a neat pile and let himself flop backwards onto the ground, looking up at the clear sky with those odd, compelling eyes. It was only just warm enough to be sitting out; there was a steady west wind swirling round the bowl and raising goose pimples on the back of Kat's neck.

She blinked. Jasor had _noticed_ that? She wasn't sure if _she_ had really sensed a difference, or if she was imagining it. 'Yes. Sort of. I think so.' Actually, Kat thought that it was Ola's doing. The other girls had seemed to ease off on her; Ferrin was always ready with a smile and a line of light, friendly chatter, but Kat had noticed in general far less whispering and glances her way recently, and if the group had a leader it was without a doubt Ola. 'I mean - there's still a lot to work on. But I tried - I've been trying - to explain myself to them a bit more.'

Jasor grinned encouragingly at her, tucking his hands behind his head, and Kat wrinkled her nose at him, then on an impulse tugged up a handful of grass and sprinkled it over his prone form. She could see why J'mat was proud of his little brother. Jasor was relaxing and fun to be with.

It made Kat wish she'd had a younger brother of her own; and then, with a disorienting shift of perspective, she remembered that she did. Egan. She'd barely ever thought about him. He was just the baby. He was Fani's. But he could have been hers too. After all, she'd adored Arrin probably from not much older than the age Egan was now. Could she have been that to her little half-brother?

Jasor was watching her, but he didn't say anything. Kat cracked a tiny smile because he was so different to any of the girls, and then on an impulse told him, 'I had a nightmare the other night.'

Jasor nodded. She got the impression that this wasn't news to him, but he stayed silent, listening intently. Kat said, 'I felt trapped, like the walls were closing in on me and I'd never escape. I've often felt like that. Usually when I couldn't sleep. But always back at Lemos. I thought that coming to Benden would _be_ my escape. So why did I feel that? The strongest I've ever felt it.'

The boy didn't respond, and Kat answered herself. It was odd how it seemed natural to tell Jasor the things that had been utterly impossible to talk about with Ferrin. Something about the quality of his silence; the way he seemed, just in the _way_ he listened, to understand. 'Because I haven't got free of Lemos, have I? It followed me here. No, it was waiting for me. The night I had the dream… that was the same night you and J'mat told me what people are saying about my father.'

That did prompt Jasor to speak. He said, 'I'm sorry about that. But I think it's better to have the truth.'

Kat sighed. 'I don't know. That sounds good. But I want to get rid of him. I just want to put it all behind me. I want to forget all about that part of my life and start again. I want to be a dragonrider.'

'That's the easier way.' Jasor's tone was unreadable.

'Easier?' Kat's voice rose. 'What's easy about it? I can't do it! I just barely begin and then something comes slamming back into me. Like Egan, today. Oh shards, I don't know if I should ever have left him and Fani. Will they be all right without me?'

Jasor leaned over and laid a slim brown hand on hers, which were unconsciously writhing together. 'You will never,' he said quietly, 'ride a dragon with a divided heart.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' Kat snapped. Even with Jasor, talking about the depths of her mind gave her an uncomfortable, irritable feeling.

Jasor never broke eye contact. That was what conveyed his single-minded intensity on what he was concentrating on, she thought, meeting his blue-and-green gaze. After just a few seconds she had to break away, fidgeting. She looked down at her lap, picking clumsily at a catch in the weave of her skirt, and listening to the shouts of a group of boys mock-fighting at the water's edge.

'I don't remember Calantha,' Jasor said, and Kat's head snapped back up, surprised. This wasn't what she had expected! 'But I've listened. Even when I was quite small I remember hearing people talk about her. The poor sick Weyrwoman. The poor distracted queenrider.'

'That's not true!' Kat jerked upright, driven by sudden and irrational anger. 'She wasn't like that! She was vibrant and laughing, she was - a wild one.' She could hear Arrin saying it.

'I've no idea how she came to Impress,' Jasor said, ignoring her outburst. 'But there's a strange duality in the way people talk about Impression, if you listen. They _say_, oh, the dragon knows, the dragon chooses, it's forgone. But then they also say, you can attract them, you have to do this and think that and it makes them more likely to choose you. That might explain it. Did you know that mating flights more often than not go the way the Weyr wants? All those people, thinking, hoping, expecting, they _can_ influence a dragon. Maybe that can happen at Hatching too. I'den was powerful in the Weyr back then. Maybe his candidate would always have got the gold, short of some exceptional girl from elsewhere showing up.'

'Where's this going, Jasor?' Kat wasn't going to tell him that she _hadn't_ noticed that in all the lectures they'd had about the forthcoming Hatching.

'Calantha should never have been a dragonrider. She couldn't let go of her past. She loved her dragon - she had no _choice_, there _is_ no choice in that - but she clung to her other loves too, and she was always torn. She didn't eat well; she always worried; she became pale and weak; and then she died. She died of a broken heart.'

Kat leant back on her elbows, carefully avoiding laying any weight on her bandaged hands, and gazed up into the pale autumnal sky. The rough grass prickled her arms through the coarse weave of her shirt, but she barely noticed. Her thoughts were with her mother. A broken heart… that was the kind of stupid emotional thing that the Holder girls believed in. Intellectually, she knew that it was the same agony that had driven her father to become what he was, but she'd never been able to feel that it was any kind of love in him that made him drive the Hold so hard.

But this… Calantha's story, the way Jasor told it, was the missing piece of the puzzle of Kat's life. Withdrawn father, trapped and fearful child… and broken mother. Unconsciously, Kat laced her fingers together. All her life her mother had been missing; a blank space, a hole. She'd tried to imagine Calantha the way Arrin described her, the way the Hold remembered her, but the faint impression she'd got had done nothing to fill the gap; it made no sense. But this pale and torn queenrider slotted painfully into place to complete the picture. A cold and fractured and hurt picture, that she could see in its entirety for the first time.

And it brought with it strangely mixed feelings. 'She didn't abandon me.'

'No. Never.'

'Then she… him!' Kat slammed her fists into the ground. 'I'den! It would've all been just fine if _he_ hadn't shown up! Flame him!'

'He's dead, Kat.'

'Good! If he wasn't then I would be severely tempted to hurt him!'

'Like your father did?' Jasor's question was light but he was still watching her, and he saw her stiffen.

Kat felt as though a bath of cold water had been poured over her. 'That's different. He wouldn't… I get my temper from her, everyone says so. Anyway, there's a big difference between… anyway, I thought you didn't believe that he killed I'den!'

'I don't know,' Jasor said, calmly. 'I don't know him. J'mat doesn't think he did. Or says he doesn't. But then, J'mat likes _you_ a lot.'

That diverted Kat. 'And you don't?' she asked, amused.

Jasor laughed and grinned at her slyly, but answered seriously. 'I think you're tougher than that. And you're going to have to deal with it if you Impress.'

Kat sighed and flopped back down. 'Yes, but let's face it, I'm not going to Impress.'

Jasor cocked his head. 'Why not?'

Kat stared up at the sky. Its blue colour was so washed out that it was almost white, and she couldn't distinguish the edges of the long, flat clouds painted across it. 'Because Ola would be a much better Weyrwoman than me,' she admitted.

'That's not true.'

'Huh?' Kat lifted her head, genuinely confused, and Jasor elaborated.

'Ola would be a great Weyrwoman. But you could be too, if only you can come to terms with your history.'

'But we're just back where we started! With me trying to forget Lemos, and _him_, and not being able to escape!'

'Because trying to forget it isn't the right way to go about it, Kat.' Jasor sat up, leaning forwards towards her. 'It's part of who you are. Isn't that what Lord Galen tried to do when he locked everything out? It's the easy way to get rid of the past, but it only hurts people. And didn't it hurt him more than anyone else?'

Kat thought of Arrin, and herself, running away, and nodded. 'So what am I supposed to do? If I have to deal with it, but I can't.'

'You can,' Jasor assured her. 'But you have to do it the right way.'

His words went through her like a sharp pain. 'You sound like Fani. You'd like Fani, Jasor. But I suppose I won't ever get the chance to introduce you… Fani told me I had to leave Lemos the right way, and I didn't do it. I was too cowardly. Will I be able to do your right way?'

'J'mat thinks you can.'

There he was, ducking again. Kat snorted, half-amused, and said, 'And you?'

Jasor smiled at her, and the warmth lit up those clear, deep eyes. 'Yes. I think you can.'

It gave Kat a little pleased glow of warmth, much the same as when she'd first met Jasor and he'd declared his faith in her, and she laughed and tousled Jasor's hair. 'Honestly, Jasor, what've you been _eating?_ Fourteen-turn-old boys just aren't supposed to be wise!'

Jasor laughed again. 'Wise. Right. I just listen.'

'Of course.' A movement caught Kat's attention and she shaded her eyes, watching a brown dragon coasting down towards the lake. 'Hey, isn't that Hideth?'

Jasor looked round. 'Yep. Race you down there!' He bounced to his feet and started running, and Kat, startled, scrambled to her feet and pelted after him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: So sorry for the wait; I really have no excuse, so that's all I'm going to say about it. Quite a short chapter this time, just easing myself back into the swing of things.**

* * *

After the eleventh day of continuous early rising and monotonous, back breaking chores and lessons, most of the other candidates seemed to be exhausted on a semi-permanent basis and Kat didn't feel so alone. Jasor, although himself unruffled and serene, was sympathetic; J'mat was not. He grinned at Kat when she complained. 'Just wait until _after_ the Hatching. You think being a candidate is bad, you have no idea of the horrors of Weyrlinghood.'

Hideth growled slightly, in a way that Kat interpreted as reproving and reproachful, and J'mat laughed, lazily scratching the brown's eye ridge. Hideth was lying prone, eyes half-closed, loosely curled around them so that they were protected by his bulk from the keen autumn wind. J'mat was slumped comfortably into the curve of his dragon's neck, his arm draped casually along the top of Hideth's head; Kat was leaning against Hideth's warm flank - somewhat nervously, because even though she'd become acclimatised to dragons and actually really liked Hideth, she couldn't quite ignore the fact that if he chose to roll over it would be the end of her - and Jasor had forgone the shelter to perch up on the dark-toned brown's back, his hair ruffling in the wind as he looked contemplatively out across the Weyr bowl.

J'mat's eyes had acquired a faint glassy hue as he talked to his dragon, so Kat twisted her head up to look at the younger brother. 'What are you thinking?' She'd found herself increasingly wondering that as Jasor silently watched and listened and _remembered_ everything that went on around him. There was something about him that was mature and sincere and thoughtful, out of keeping with his age.

Except, of course, when he was behaving like any other boy. He looked down, startled at Kat's question, and then grinned and said innocently, 'Oh, I was just thinking that J'mat must be late for drills, since D'lin's heading this way looking really mad.'

'What?' J'mat flipped straight back to awareness and shot to his feet, vaulting over Hideth's neck to get a clear view around the dragon, scanning the rocky crater frantically. 'Hideth, get -'

He broke off, and Kat, intrigued, scrambled to her feet, jogging lazily round to a point where she too could see. Then she understood; there were a few people in the bowl enjoying the crisp autumn sunlight - including a group of their fellow candidates - some relaxing, some wandering and others crossing purposefully, but none was D'lin and none was headed in their direction.

'_Jasor_,' J'mat said, warningly.

The younger boy grinned again. 'Wakey wakey, big brother,' he said cheerfully, then tumbled himself off Hideth's back as J'mat lunged for him. The young dragonrider followed him by the most direct route, swinging himself up onto Hideth's huge bulk and jumping off the other side after Jasor, who was already running away, dodging round to put the dragon in between them again.

Kat, standing by Hideth's head, glanced down at the dragon as the boys chased each other. The brown met her gaze and then quite distinctly rolled his eyes indulgently at the two brothers. Kat giggled, then hopped out of the way as Hideth flicked out a claw and snagged Jasor's ankle. The boy went sprawling to the ground and scrambled back to his feet laughing. 'Not fair!' he protested, but his brother had already caught up with him and tackled him back to the floor so that they rolled together across the rough ground, dirt and grass smearing their clothing.

Kat backed to a safe distance. She wasn't worried; the two boys were laughing far too hard to inflict any serious damage on each other. As she watched J'mat managed to roll himself on top and pin his smaller brother to the ground, grinning triumphantly as Jasor wriggled to try and unseat him. Kat lifted a hand to her face to stifle another giggle. She seemed to recall that at one point she'd been a little in awe of J'mat; he had seemed so mature and responsible. It didn't seem obvious right at the moment.

Somehow Jasor squirmed out of his brother's grip and pelted away. Briefly Kat wondered what he thought he was going to achieve, and then realised that the younger boy was thinking tactically; as he dashed towards the scattered group of candidates he yelled, 'Renno, Falwin, I could use a little help here!'

The two boys he'd addressed turned their heads, and then hastily climbed to their feet as the brothers crashed between the seated candidates, dodging breathlessly. Kat saw J'mat leap over one boy, calling 'sorry', and then someone grabbed him; someone else tripped Jasor, and the whole group turned into a laughing, good-natured brawl.

A few of the girls had been amongst the loosely spread gathering; as they rapidly pulled themselves to their feet and backed out of the conflict zone, Kat saw an opportunity to build some bridges and lifted a hand to wave at them. 'Over here.'

'Thanks.' Ferrin grinned at her as she strolled over with the tall, gawky girl that Kat knew was called Esla. She jerked her head back towards the wrestling boys, glossy dark wings of hair swinging on either side of her face and laughed. 'Boys. They're all the same, huh?'

Kat felt awkward again; she didn't really know any other boys. Fortunately Esla rescued her by admitting to the same - at least, that's what Kat _thought_ she meant when she said, 'Actually I don't have enough experience for comparison. But I think it extremely likely that they're all highly individualistic and that it's probably foolish to make sweeping generalisations.'

That was right. Esla was the smart one, who made endless notes in class and who was always reading. Ferrin blinked. 'Um - that was a joke, Es. Well, not a _joke_ precisely, but - oh, look, the problem isn't that you don't know enough boys, the problem is that you don't gossip with enough _girls_.'

Kat blanked her face to avoid flushing in her relief that Esla had made the comment before she had. It looked like she wasn't the only one missing the point in the niceties of the other girls' conversations.

Ferrin wasn't paying attention anyway; it had only been a throwaway comment for her anyway, and she'd had her thoughts diverted by the arrival of another girl; plump, frizzy-haired little Ginna, who was frowning worriedly. 'What's wrong?' Ferrin asked.

'I've left my purse in our room.' Ginna's hands fluttered unhappily round the place where it should have hung from her belt.

'Well, we still have some time before lessons. Just go back and get it.' Ferrin was as always eminently practical.

Ginna scowled. 'I _would_, but the glows are out, and I asked Lena and she says we can't have new ones until this evening.'

'Well, it's been a bad year. We don't have that many to spare.' Esla still sounded slightly out of step with the conversation, but this time Ferrin nodded, agreeing with her.

'Yeah, it's the same at home. Do you need it back badly, Ginna? It's probably safe enough where it is.'

Kat blinked. There was a shortage of glows this year? That was… she hadn't known that.

She should've done. She thought guiltily of Lemos, huge empty halls and corridors brightly lit. But no - it _wasn't_ her fault, how could she have known? She never knew anything like that. He never told me, she thought, bitterly. And yet - household supplies are the Lady's concern. She felt another stab of guilt. I probably could have known. I never did listen when I was supposed to be helping Fani and Halina. I never _asked_.

'I suppose.' Ginna still sounded distinctly unhappy. 'I'd just feel better if I had it here.'

Kat attempted to shake off her own unease by taking an interest in Ginna's problem. 'Well, it's not like the room's that far from the main cavern. Do you know where exactly you left your purse? Couldn't you find it in the dark?'

Ginna shuddered fearfully - and, Kat thought, rather over-dramatically. 'Ugh! Yes, I know I left it on my bed; but I'm not going groping around for it. I mean - it's _dark_ in there.'

And that, no doubt, is the appropriate ladylike reaction. Kat felt sudden laughter bubbling up inside her. But 'appropriate' and 'ladylike' were always pretty difficult for me; besides, they're no fun. And this is the Weyr; I'm not a lady any more. 'I'll get it for you,' she offered the younger girl, suddenly pitying her rather pathetic timidity. 'I don't mind.'

After all, she laughed to herself, as she walked carefully through silent corridors where the darkness lay thick and soft like liquid, after everything she'd done, after all the lying and the hiding and the running and the fear, was she really going to be frightened by the dark? Even this complete underground dark that seemed to fill her lungs and coat her eyes in clammy blackness. She trailed her fingers lightly along the wall, counting off the turnings where the cool rock under her touch turned into hanging hide or just disappeared altogether into the echoing breezy emptiness of a side passage.

And it was surprisingly easy to find her way back to the candidate barracks. I'm getting used to this, she reflected as she groped her way along the row of beds reaching for Ginna's. I'm getting to know this place. I'm starting to belong here.

Her hand closed on the soft crumpled hide of Ginna's belt purse, and she sat down on the other girl's bed. Yes, I'm starting to belong here.

She wasn't even sure how that made her feel. It was good; surely, it _must_ be a good thing, because she _liked_ the Weyr. She'd never had fun before; she'd never felt allowed, even _encouraged_ to explore and argue and be active and fearless and intelligent. She'd never slept this well, or eaten this much, despite the huge difference between the plain, mass cooking of the Weyr and the intricate delicacies she'd had set in front of her at Lemos' high table. She was even starting to get used to the work and to the way that she was no one special; and it was oddly liberating. And she'd _certainly_ never had friends like Jasor and J'mat, or even Ferrin and the other girls.

In a flash of memory she felt herself, when she must have been very young indeed, being swung round and round in Arrin's strong hands, laughing fit to burst as her feet left the ground, and she grinned into the darkness. She'd never felt loved since he left; not until she came here. She'd never been more sure that she wanted to stay.

And yet. Kat sighed and bit her lip. At the back of her mind it felt strangely like a betrayal to settle in at Benden. After all - even her mother had never been able to manage that completely, and she had Impressed. And Kat had - huh. So much for thinking she was fearless now. She'd run away. She'd abandoned _something_, even if it had been stifling and terrible, and it was like snapping all the threads of her life, and now she'd never be able to straighten things out. Did her father _know_ that Calantha had never forgotten them, had died of a broken heart because of them? Would it help? And could he - could he _possibly_ know more than anyone else did about I'den's death? She'd never know now. But then - she'd never have known anyway. Her whole life had been full of mysteries, and did it _really_ make a difference that she'd exchanged the old ones for new?

She was so confused.

She sighed and flopped over backwards on the bed. There was a faint humming vibration coming from somewhere; she could feel it in the rock when she stilled and she frowned, confused. What - ?

Then she heard running footsteps and a burst of conversation. She climbed to her feet and turned to the door, watching as flickering slivers of light slipped round the hide curtain, strengthening and brightening until she found her dark-adjusted eyes watering and had to bring up a hand to cover them. Coming to where she was; bright lights and loud, nervous voices and frantic footsteps, and that resonant humming in the air - and then suddenly she understood and gasped with sudden frozen fear.

The Hatching? No. I'm not ready. I'm not ready!


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer:** **Pernand the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Um… I feel like apologising for the long waits between chapters has become very old, but I really can't think of anything to say except that I am so sorry. I was away all summer with no internet access, and I really hoped to get this finished before I went, but that sadly failed. I hope the huge gap hasn't put people off! **

**In response to some very sensible comments made by (among others) MageofRoses, rnsintrepidwriter, and I think earlier cathrl, you may notice I've made some slight changes to the formatting; I've been having some problems notating direct thoughts, mostly caused by me being too lazy to punctuate speech correctly. From now on I'll be using "double quotation marks for speech", 'single quotation marks to indicate direct thoughts', and **_**italics to show when someone is speaking to a dragon**_**. I'll retrocon these through the story when I find a minute. It may be a little confusing at first, but I hope that it'll be clearer long term. Thanks very much to those who pointed out the problem to me!**

**I'm powering towards the end of this story now, so let's go straight on…**

* * *

As the other girls spilled into the room, bringing the glowlight with them, Kat dropped Ginna's purse back onto the younger girl's bed and headed back towards her own, flinging open the clothes chest and dragging out the white candidate tunic she'd been given with fingers that shook. All around her girls doing the same thing seemed to move in a different world, somehow disconnected. She could hear nervous, high-pitched chatter and giggling as they changed rapidly, but she couldn't make out any words. Ivenna had pulled out her cosmetics and was applying a quick sweep of colour to her suddenly pale face. Ferrin's skin was too fair anyway to show a difference, but the black-haired girl was muttering to herself continuously under her breath. Tyrel moved stiffly, as if her muscles had locked up. Ola looked distant and haughty, and yet somehow gaunt, the skin of her face tightly stretched. Kat saw it all, but she seemed to have lost any ability to reason and make sense of it.

The Hatching. The Hatching. The words reverberated in her head like a drum beat. Kat dragged the ill-fitting tunic over her head and quickly shed her skirt. She fumbled the laces and had to stop, forcing her hands to be still, before she could manage the knots.

That done she looked up, wondering where she was supposed to go next, what to do. She'd been told. She knew she'd been told, she must have been told, but she suddenly had no idea. The other girls were pouring back out of the door. Kat followed them numbly.

A similar stream of people was emerging of the boys' barracks, almost opposite, and the groups mingled and became indistinct as the candidates hurried down the corridor. All dressed alike they seemed to Kat to be strangely homogeneous and indistinct. Still feeling as though some invisible screen divided her from them, Kat let herself be carried by the flow, floating above the babble of voices, the high-pitched laughter and the frantic well-wishes. One boy was being sick, heaving helplessly while a friend patted his back, trying to be reassuring even as he cast anxious glances down the corridor, wondering if he was going to be late.

"Kat! You all right?" A hand grabbed her arm and her bubble burst abruptly, the noise of the crowd of candidates cascading over her head with sudden intensity.

It took all her years of practice at schooling her face for her to be able to summon a shaky smile at the friendly enquiry. "Yes. But I'm not ready for this, Jasor. I need more time!"

Jasor's blue and green eyes caught and held her own, utterly certain and compelling. "If we all had the time we thought we needed, no one deserving a dragon would ever make it onto the sands. It's time to _be_ ready, Kat."

"Yes, but -" She grabbed for his hand in sudden desperation, clutching his fingers. "I can't - I don't know -"

Jasor's gaze softened and he squeezed her hand gently. "Kat, no one does. Now go on! _I_ know that you can do anything that you decide to." He gave her a soft shove in the direction everyone was headed.

For a brief minute her attention flickered off herself. "Wait - aren't you coming?"

"Just got something to do - I'll see you there," he called as the crowd swept them apart. Kat craned her neck and caught a brief glimpse of his thin brown-haired shape crouching beside the sick boy. She wondered if she ought to go back and help; but she didn't know the other boy, and it was _really_ disgusting, and what could she do for him anyway? Jasor was bound to know how to help him; she wouldn't have had a clue.

'Bet Ola would know,' she thought, treacherously, and then shook her head. 'Stop it! Thoughts like that are just exactly the opposite of what's going to help right now.'

She could hear someone yelling up ahead. For a moment it didn't register, and then she recognised the Candidate Master's voice, trying to marshall his nervous and confused charges into some sort of order.

Kat gulped, and looked around frantically for Jasor. Then she clenched her fists, squared her shoulders, and marched forwards into the chaos.

* * *

The Hatching Cavern was huge. It was almost impossible to tell that it was underground at all, it was so high and spacious and brightly lit, until she looked upwards and found no sky there. Instead there was a roof of dragons clinging to the cracks and protuberances of the rock, their gem-like hides making a shifting, many-hued covering. Their humming was filling the air with expectancy, and multi-faceted eyes were fixed intently on the eggs.

The queen egg sat apart from the others, on a raised platform that all the female candidates had been ushered up onto, and that was the only reason that Kat could tell which it was. It was smaller than she'd expected; a dull ovoid standing perhaps as high as her knee. She knew that it was supposed to be highly distinctive, to have a golden sheen that made it unmistakable, but against the gleaming hide of the queen dragon the colour wasn't obvious. Perhaps it was to those who'd seen more eggs. The bulk of the eggs, down on the main sands, were too far away for her to inspect them closely.

She could see the other candidates, though, some of the boys spreading out to form a loose ring around the unevenly spread cluster of eggs and others standing close together. The other girls were grouped in a nervous huddle; some looking up at the stands, trying to spot friends and family, or glancing around, but most keeping a wary eye on the great golden dragon hunched behind the queen egg. She was lying down, not overtly defensive or threatening, but her narrowed, whirling eyes and lashing tail said plainly that she could and would defend her unborn offspring from anyone who threatened them or just angered her. Kat, standing on her own a little way off, found herself rather scornful of the girls' timid clustering, and then had to suppress a wild bubble of half-hysterical laughter that she could pity them their nervousness in the midst of her own terror.

The dragons' humming was reaching a pitch of intensity so that the air shivered. Kat shook her head slightly, as if that would help, and looked up at the stands herself. No one was there to support her, of course, but a fair number of candidates' families had made the journey. She could pick out the non-dragonriders easily; they tended to sit in small groups by themselves, and many of them seemed nervous, awkward and uncomfortable. The dragonriders were behaving more as if they were at a celebration; they chattered, laughed, and called remarks at each other. Even without knowing the people in question or being able to hear the words said, Kat could pick up on the convivial, relaxed atmosphere, and it helped bleed a little of the tension out of her shoulders.

She spotted the Weyrleaders easily, despite having met them only very briefly; their seats were the best, with a clear view of everything that was happening on the sands, and even from down below she could see the steel in the look that the Senior Weyrwoman fixed on her dragon, commanding her to remain stationery and allow the candidates to approach her eggs. The Weyrleader sat beside her, one eye on his weyrmate as he talked courteously to a tall figure in Harper blue. Kat recognised him easily; the distinguished-looking Masterharper. Beside him sat a small, chubby figure, and Kat remembered the red-faced, breathless apprentice - Darren, Dannen, something like that. He didn't seem at all overawed by his august company; in fact he looked more than usually vacant as he gazed into space somewhere above the heads of the candidates down on the sands, and Kat smiled. It still seemed almost too lucky that he had ignorantly given _her_ Arrin's letter, but she would remember his moonlike stare with fondness because of it.

Collectively, the crowd gasped and jumped to its feet, the non-weyrfolk a few steps behind the dragonriders, and the crowd noise surged suddenly. Kat, caught out in her musings, jumped and reflexively snapped her head around to check on the queen egg. The sudden movement made her briefly dizzy and she blinked her vision clear, brushing away the sweat prickling on her forehead. It was so hot!

The queen egg looked exactly the same as it had before; Kat looked back down into the main part of the sands, and saw that a number of boys were converging on one point. For a moment a boy's head blocked her view, and then she saw that an egg was rocking from side to side, scooping out a shallow depression in the boiling sand.

There was a crack. Kat, along with everyone else in the Hatching Ground, craned her neck to try and see better. The egg was still moving, jerking violently from side to side. More quietly, she heard a series of tapping noises, and then a second, louder, crack. The egg must have burst, surely? But the boys were still huddled intently around it. Kat frowned, and a movement caught in the corner of her eye. At the other end of the clutch a single boy was hurrying between the still unmoving eggs; Kat looked where he was looking and caught a flash of pale bright green. The next moment there was no doubt; a shrill, demanding squeal split the air, and everyone still watching the huddle around the rocking egg started violently.

The boy had reached the half-hidden moving shape that Kat had seen; all at once he seemed to tumble forwards, reaching out his hands, as if the breath had been knocked out of him. Kat had one glimpse of his shining face as he carefully gathered the tiny green dragonet into his arms and thought that she saw tears tracking down his cheeks. For a moment he hunched over the little creature; and then he lifted his head to the crowd, away from Kat, and shouted breathlessly, "Shireth! She's called Shireth!'

The crowd was cheering; Kat could see other eggs beginning to move, as if encouraged by the noise. The air above the sands was shimmering; she could feel the slow burn rising up through her feet and suppressed an undignified hop from foot to foot like some of the other girls were doing. The boys were beginning to spread out, to scatter among the eggs, bunching where an egg was definitely moving, promising to hatch soon.

'Malith!'

'Entireth!'

Two boys shouted almost simultaneously, and Kat peered to see them as the dragonriders in the stands whooped and applauded. A blue and another green, she thought; and then her attention was caught by a larger egg near her side of the clutch that rocked suddenly once, violently. Then it stilled again; Kat watched it, holding her breath. Nothing.

It shattered in a single explosive moment. Kat gave a quick startled grin as pieces of shell burst in all directions, and then the dragonet stood poised among the remains. Light scattered over its damp hide, dull green hints flashing from the gleaming bronze as it raised its head and looked around.

The movement in the corner of her eyes and shouting floating faintly through the heat-filled air told her that other eggs were hatching, other Impressions being made, but something about the little bronze dragonet kept Kat watching as it stepped forward, shaking off a small piece of shell that snagged on its miniature claw. No - _stepped_ wasn't really the word for it; the tiny bronze _strutted_, it swaggered forwards, a little arrogant lordling, as though it already knew that it was born to lead. Kat smiled at it indulgently, amused, and then froze as a thought slipped into her mind. 'Is this how Egan will be when he's old enough to understand that he is the only strong contender to be the next Lord Holder of Lemos? I suppose I'll never get to know now.'

It surprised her to find how sad that thought made her. 'Well, flame J'mat and Jasor,' she thought, seriously but with no real malice. She knew it was watching her friends together that made her wonder about her own small half-brother.

Thinking of Jasor, there he was - and Kat found herself watching him move between the candidates with a certain sense of realisation. Though the slight boy's walk had a diffidence and courtesy as he slipped around the people in his way with a polite word and a self-effacing gesture, there was a certain kind of confidence to his stride, a certainty and sense of completeness that somehow seemed to clear his route. Maybe it was just Kat's perspective from above, but to her it was obvious what was going to happen long before his path met the clear space the little bronze dragonet was driving across the sands.

As Jasor picked up the little bronze he looked up; and the intensity of his expression as his varicoloured eyes lit up and bled joy into the air knocked Kat backwards so that she didn't even hear his dragon's name. She'd never seen anyone so happy; hadn't even known it was possible; and she smiled privately before remembering again that she wasn't a Lord Holder's daughter any more and letting out a whoop that caused the girls standing near her to jump in fright. Glancing upwards, she glimpsed J'mat leaping to his feet and jumping up onto his seat to cheer.

Jasor heard her yell even over the roaring of the crowd and the brown-haired boy flashed his enormous and infectious grin towards her and freed one hand to punch the air in victory. Kat laughed out loud and lifted her hands above her head so that he could see her clapping wildly.

'That's _so_ Jasor,' she thought indulgently as he turned and carried his new life mate away towards the Hatching Grounds entrance. She'd come to characterise her friend by the blend of quiet maturity and boyish exuberance. Even her limited familiarity with the Weyr and its ways told her that no one deserved more - or was more likely - to be a bronze rider.

But Jasor had no regrets and no secret reservations. 'Not like me,' she thought, bitterly. 'Do _I_ deserve this? Really?'

There seemed to be a slight lull in activity. The crowd quietened a little as the boys left on the sands gathered hopefully around the still unopened eggs and the girls drew into a tighter huddle, watching the queen egg intently as though they knew that it must hatch soon. The quiet had a strange effect on Kat, already a bit light-headed from the heat; she felt as though she was dropping through a pool of still water into a moment of intense clarity.

'No,' she thought, and sighed, as much from relief as from disappointment. It seemed suddenly that an answer was all she required; that instant of certainty. She couldn't go on like this, scattering half-finished parts of her life, moving on, running away.

'I have to go back to Lemos.' The realisation settled heavily into her chest. 'I have to go back to Lemos, because there's no one else. Only I can stop this chain of unhappiness and heartbreak. It's gone on far too long already. What's Egan going to grow up in, huh? And what's he going to teach his children, and theirs, if all he ever learns is… is ice and not caring? It's on me. It's all on me, and I have to go back because even that tiny gesture may be enough to end it, and it's my responsibility. And _then_ I can come back - next Hatching. But I'll do it the right way this time.'

It ought to be easy, she felt, when she knew she was doing the right thing. But an icy, leaden feeling seemed to wrap itself around her as she forced her legs to move, and itchy frozen fear that grabbed her spine and throat. She swallowed painfully and carried on making her way over to the edge of the raised platform. 'What are you afraid of?' she asked herself sternly. 'There's nothing. You're afraid of _being_ afraid, you're afraid of being trapped, and that can't happen now. You go freely, and you'll be back here at a time of your choosing. You're only afraid because you've _been_ afraid so long!' She scrambled clumsily down onto the main sands, wincing as the sand and grit rubbed itself into the sores on her hands. The air was shimmering with heat haze. Through it, as she happened to look upwards at the crowd, she could see the Weyrleaders and the Masterharper climbing to their feet. Someone was stepping out of the rough archway into the stands and advancing to meet the dignitaries, holding out a friendly hand; someone dark-haired and golden-skinned, someone compact, confident, charming -

Kat gaped upwards, startled and delighted laughter breaking out, incredibly touched. Her heart warmed; Arrin had come to see her Hatching. "Sorry!" she gasped out, as if he could hear her, her laughter turning almost hysterical. "I don't think this is what you really expected to see!"

But Arrin wasn't alone. Her laughter trailed off and she stared up wonderingly as someone else stepped out behind him; a woman, raven-haired and elegant, with a young child balanced on her hip. She glided out serenely to exhange greetings with the Weyrwoman, and Kat's mouth dropped open in disbelief. How had she - what had she - how, _how_, could _Fani_ be here? But yet - Kat knew her stepmother's figure and walk as well as she knew her own. And who else _could_ it be, with Arrin, and welcomed so by the Weyrleaders? But it was _utterly -_

A third figure walked out behind Fani, and Kat's flood of bewildered internal questions dried up as her jaw fused itself to her chest. Her mind had blown. She couldn't even begin to comprehend the sheer impossibility - but - the last person was a man, tall and dark, jerky and awkward in his movements as he nodded stiffly to the Masterharper and Weyrleaders, his gaunt face and hawk-like profile outlined against the light.


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer:** **Pernand**** the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Just to prove that I honestly can keep to a tight schedule when I put my mind to it. Although it wasn't that hard as this is only a very very short chapter. And remember, I always welcome feedback, especially comment on what worked or didn't work for you and anything I can do to make this story better! (ps - Amere, hi! Great to hear from you again. See, I don't take forever to upload... well, not _always_...)**

The huge cavern seemed to be spinning around her, bright sparks of dragon hides dancing and cartwheeling around the corners of her vision. 'I'm seeing things,' she thought, distantly. 'It's the heat. I wonder if I'm going to faint?' But the centre of her vision remained unnervingly clear; her family, _all_ of them, in their festival finery, _together_, walking into the Hatching Ground. Her _father_ inside the Weyr, albeit stiff and awkward and forbidding - her father greeting, _voluntarily_ greeting the Weyrleaders! Her _father_!

'I'm so arrogant,' Kat thought, wonderingly, watching them. 'I'm so arrogant! Did I really think only I could do anything? Did I believe it was all about me?'

Galen took a seat and scanned the Hatching Ground loftily. If he spotted her he gave no sign of it, but then Fani took the seat next to him, and the tiny inclination of the Lord Holder's head as her mouth moved in a soft-voiced remark told Kat that despite his unchanging face he was listening to her, recognising his wife in a way Kat had never seen. The girl's mouth dropped open even further as she drank in the scene through wide eyes. 'Oh, Fani!' she thought, and laughed softly, almost breathless with joy. 'What _has_ happened?'

Arrin moved, and she thought she knew. Her athletic uncle looked around, hesitated - and then carefully, deliberately, chose the seat next to his older brother. Kat gaped up at him, wishing she was close enough to throw her arms around him. 'He went back!' she realised. 'Someone, somehow, _something_ touched him, and - or maybe it was father, even, maybe he swallowed his pride and wrote Arrin, how am I supposed to know, but _someone_ had a moment of insight, of wisdom, and somehow, somehow, it's going to be all right!' Her skin ached where her smile was so wide it threatened to split her face in two and she lifted her hands to her cheeks and found herself wiping away moistness from astonished, happy tears. 'It was _never_ about me,' she thought. 'It was about all of us, and someone - older and wiser and braver than me - has tipped the balance back in the right direction. And -' the next thought was so astonishing that it stopped even her desperately relieved flood of thoughts '- and they're all right without me.'

'_They don't need me_.' Somehow, weight that Kat didn't even know she was carrying was lifting free of her shoulders, letting her stand taller, letting her float. Her family supported her - they were _here_ to support her! - maybe, just maybe, they even loved her - but they didn't _need_ her there, tied to that life, stuck in the eternal grimness of Lemos Hold. Now she was free. Now she could be anyone that she wanted to be.

And she _wanted_ to be a goldrider of Benden Weyr. Kat spun around, dazzlingly joyful and finally, _finally_ sure of where she was going, and marched back to the raised dais where the queen egg waited.

There she had to pause a minute; the platform was shoulder height for her, and the sand was burning hot where she would have to out her hands in order to pull herself up. She frowned, looking up and down, wondering whether there was an easier way up.

"Here." Someone above knelt at the edge, bracing themselves and reaching down.

"Thanks," Kat responded gratefully, grabbing the offered hand and scrabbling her way up until she landed in an ungraceful breathless heap on her belly at the top. The other girl helped her to her feet, and Kat steadied herself and found herself looking into Ola's deep brown eyes.

Kat opened her mouth and was hit by a sudden feeling of déjà vu. "Ola -" she paused, not knowing exactly what to say. "Thank you. Why are you helping me?"

Ola's face was earnest and serious. "I want to ride the queen. Don't make any mistake about that. But - what's the point in winning if you haven't beaten the best?"

Kat looked at the other girl, her own face falling into the same intent lines as she inspected Ola. 'This is honour,' she thought, faintly surprised. To her, honour had always been about standing on your dignity and refusing to show emotion or weakness. But this, this stubbornly self-hindering quality in the auburn-haired beauty, was _real_ honour and the right sort of pride.

She nodded slowly, and said quietly, "Right."

The two girls turned together, almost in unison, and walked over towards the queen egg shoulder-to-shoulder. Kat glanced sideways at Ola out of the corner of her eye as a couple of other girls stepped back to let them through. 'This would be a friend worth having,' she realised, 'If I can only make it happen…'

The queen egg was rocking now in its place, the great golden dragon stretching her long neck over towards it and humming more strongly as if encouraging it. Kat could feel the vibrations reverberating through the rock of walls and floor, stirring the stifling air in gentle patterns as the light seemed to shape itself so that the eleven girls clustered around the gleaming egg were the focal point of the whole cavern. The noise seemed to build tremors of excitement through Kat; she snatched another glance upwards at her family, half-afraid that they would have vanished, and found that they were all, even Galen, watching enthralled.

Her heart singing and a foolish smile breaking out across her face, Kat took another step forward. The egg cracked, a distinct splintering sound, and shivered as a fine network of lines spread themselves across it. Behind her she heard someone's tunic rustling as they tried to move in, but a sudden and vehement hiss from the maternal queen caused them to jump back hurriedly. Stilling her own impulse to jerk away in fright, Kat snatched a glance at Ola, still beside her. 'We two seem to be tolerated,' she thought. 'So it really is just me and her.'

She'd known that anyway.

Gently, carefully, walking on the soles of her feet as though she were sneaking through the back corridors of Lemos, she stepped towards the egg. It was cracking apart now in earnest, flakes of shell falling to the ground with that unmistakeable sharp and brittle noise and within Kat could see damp dark gold flashing. And then one last ferocious shove smashed through the remnants of the smooth oval and the egg collapsed in a heap of porcelain fragments, and the little queen stood in the midst of it all, shaking shell-grit off her wet hide with an irritated flick of her tiny wings.

And Kat found that her vision had gone funny again; the light seemed to coalesce around the dragonet and skid glitteringly off her gleaming shape, outlining her softly so that when she moved she left dazzling traces in the air where she had been. Kat exhaled slowly, a long gusty sigh, and took another step forwards, almost involuntarily. Ola was opposite her now, on the other side of the little gold, and if you'd asked Kat moments before what she'd do she'd have said that she'd look at Ola, maybe even sneak one more glance up into the stands to check that her family were really there, but actually in that perfect breathless moment she stood entirely separate from everything in the world except the baby queen as the dragonet snaked out her neck and swung her elegant wedge-shaped head around to meet Kat's eyes.

And Kat, the hot, rippling air swirling about her, fell headfirst into those welling pools of light, sank into Lumeth's eyes so deep that she knew she would never break surface again.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey.**

**AN: Okay, this time I actually have a legitimate excuse. I've had the flu. And very nasty it was too. I huddled in bed for a couple of days and felt miserable. But I'm much better now, so here it is - a lovely long offering for the very final chapter of Katriel's story! Please let me know what you think, especially if you feel anything is not properly resolved; I welcome constructive criticism!**

"Another one." Lena had clucked her tongue disapprovingly, feeling Kat's forehead and pinching the skin of her forearm. "Honestly, these candidates don't have the sense they were born with. Not one of them remembers to take in fluids… drink this, child." She held out a beaker of water.

"Yes." Kat hadn't been listening, leaning over Lumeth as the little dragon tore into a bowl of food, tossing lumps of meat and gristle in all directions as she gulped it down, chunks straining and distorting the soft hide of her throat. "Gently, hey there, gently, you'll choke."

_But I'm soooo hungry!_ Lumeth swivelled one eye towards the girl for a second, and then dropped the pose in order to plunge her head back into the bowl.

"All right, I know. But take it slower, come on now. I'll help you." Kat reached down to separate two lumps of meat held together by a stringy flap of skin, and the stench of blood on her hands suddenly sent her reeling, nauseous and giddy.

"Drink it." A flabby white hand grasped her arm and the headwoman thrust the water into Kat's other hand, supporting it to her mouth. "Sip. That's good."

Kat's head cleared slightly and Lena let go of her. "Now finish it. All of it."

_Are you well?_ The question was plaintive and querulous and accompanied by a warm head butting against her leg.

"Yes, I'm fine," Kat said hurriedly, reaching down to stroke Lumeth's head with one hand even as she tipped back the drink and handed the beaker back to the fat headwoman. She crouched down by her dragon, smiling, "See? I'm fine, see."

Lena had snorted, refilling the water. "Take this and go and choose yourself a weyr. She'll - Lumeth, is it? - Lumeth will need to sleep now she's eaten. You're to drink all of this and sit there quietly for at least half an hour before you pretty up and go down to the feast. And take it easy on the wine; you're dehydrated and you've got a mild heatstroke. You'll probably have a headache for a while."

Now, sitting in the cool dark of their new weyr, Kat could feel the faint throbbing in her head, but it couldn't even put a dent in her happiness. Lumeth was sleeping soundly beside her, and she rested a hand on her dragon's soft hide to feel the gentle rhythmic movement of the little queen's breathing.

Maybe it was Lumeth's deep slumbering that made her feel so tired. Kat leaned back against the cold rock wall and knew that she was grinning inanely, filled with an exhausted euphoria. Soon she'd go down and see everyone, but for now it was just perfect to sit where she was with her eyes half-closed, one knee drawn up to her chest and Lumeth's warm weight resting heavily against the other leg. She tipped her head back against the wall and stroked Lumeth gently; the dragon made a contented snuffling noise in her sleep and wriggled a little to settle herself down, and in the quiet darkness Kat could feel the smoky elusive sweetness of her dragon's dreams.

* * *

Kat awoke with a start when the empty ceramic beaker hit the floor and clattered away. For one half-panicked moment she didn't know where she was or what she was doing; then she placed herself by the new and yet achingly familiar sense of Lumeth's presence.

She must have passed Lena's time constraint; carefully shifting Lumeth off her leg without waking the dragonet, Kat scrambled to her feet and found herself stiff and aching. Wincing and scrunching up her face, she hobbled to the doorway and slipped out into the glowlit corridor, blinking and shading her eyes.

There she paused. She was going to the feast, that was a given; but her family was going to be there and there was no way that she could turn up in the baggy white tunic that she'd been wearing since the Hatching. She turned the other way and headed back towards the girls' dormitory instead. The blouse and skirt that Dramma had leant her were still there - probably still tossed on the bed where she'd left them.

She frowned. She'd been wearing that same outfit for more than a week and doing all kinds of messy jobs in it; besides, they were plain, simple, hard-wearing clothes; not suitable for a feast at all - not even for a weyr girl, and certainly not for a queenrider. Nor for Lord Galen's daughter; and tonight it looked as though she was Lord Galen's daughter again.

She padded onwards. Maybe she should take a look at her azure brocade again? Yes, it was soiled, but was it _really_ so bad, or was that just part of her own self-pity when she arrived? It couldn't be worse than her other choices, could it?

She was trying to think of other options and not paying much attention to where she was going as she turned into the corridor where all the candidates had slept. If she had thought about it then she would have supposed that it would be empty now; but as she neared the doorway she heard voices.

"I'm _not_ going down," she heard Della say, sounding haughty but distinctly sulky. Kat drew to a halt. She'd never come to like Della, and she wasn't sure whether she wanted to interrupt.

She recognised the sound of Ola's rich drawl answering but couldn't hear what the older girl said; but she picked up Della's strident response. "Oh, come off it, Ola! Don't try and pretend it's all right. No one wants to see her strutting around, lording it over us all, and you're more bitter than anyone; that's obvious despite what you say."

Ola must have been annoyed, or maybe she moved towards the entrance; her next comment was much more audible. "Flaming right, Della, I'm _bitterly_ disappointed, but if I was to run off and sulk in a corner over it then I would just be demonstrating exactly why I didn't Impress! I'm going to the feast; I'm going to celebrate and smile and congratulate Kat, because that, like it or not, is the right thing to do! Even if I don't feel happy for her I'm going to say I do; and it doesn't matter whether it's true or not so long as I act like it is. And you know, _she'd_ actually get that, Della."

Listening, Kat's mouth slowly opened into a silent 'oh!' of understanding. She didn't think she'd ever heard aloof, supercilious Ola actually explain herself to anyone before; but the auburn-maned girl was right. Kat did know what she meant, because she'd heard it before. In the end, Ola ended up sounding an awful lot like - well, like a haughtier, unfriendly version of - Jasor or Fani. In the end, her behaviour also came down to an attempt to do things the right way.

The heavy hide curtain over the doorway moved and Kat realised that Ola had indeed been moving towards the entrance; the fair-haired girl backed up hurriedly around the corner as silently as she could. She didn't want Ola to know that she'd been eavesdropping. She picked her way back to the first intersection, then paused. She could hear faintly in the distance the music and roaring chatter of the feast in progress; but she still didn't have anything to wear.

"Kat." Ola came round the corner behind her; she sounded a little surprised but not suspicious, which Kat supposed was good. She turned to face the older girl, noticing how stunning Ola was looking in a deep green gown that swirled around her shapely ankles. She was sharply aware of her own attire and glad she hadn't headed down to the feast.

"Hey, Ola."

"Congratulations." Ola couldn't quite pull off the complete sincerity that she was going for, but it was a good effort. Kat was able to smile quite naturally in return; and then the expression turned to one of pure bliss as she thought of Lumeth.

"Thank you. Um - I'm - you know, I'm -" She was going to say, 'I'm sorry,' but Ola's scorching glare cut off her awkward expression. "Right. Thanks." She nodded instead. Naturally Ola wanted nothing less than to be pitied. She collected her thoughts, let her mind stray back to her dragon's peaceful slumbers to calm the blush rising up her neck, and instead said lightly, "Hey, you should go on down to the dining cavern. A'din's waiting."

Ola searched the younger girl's face, wondering if she was being mocked; Kat must have passed some test, because the beauty suddenly smiled properly, a flash of genuine happiness. "Yeah, you're right."

The two girls' eyes met for an instant, a moment of connection and mutual understanding; and then Ola walked on past.

The auburn-haired girl passed someone as she went, a shorter but no less elegant figure, and Kat's heart jumped painfully inside her chest. "Fani!" She ran the few steps between them and threw her arms around her stepmother.

"Good evening, Kat." Fani freed an arm from the package she was carrying and returned the girl's embrace, as soft and composed as ever. "It's good to see you well."

"I've missed you." Kat's voice was muffled in the shorter woman's shoulder.

"Likewise." The dark woman gently disengaged herself. "But I see that I got my goldrider in the family."

"Yeah. Yes, you did! Fani, I know why my mother couldn't come home. It's like - with Lumeth, it's like - like I was waiting my whole life for the moment when we met. Like nothing else _really_ meant anything. Like I never loved anyone - like I never even knew what love _was_ until today. She's -" She swallowed, shaking her head, as she tried to explain. "She's so perfect. She's _so_ perfect." She touched Lumeth's sleeping mind quietly and felt the rush of contentment from the peacefully slumbering dragonet. Then, abruptly, she realised what she'd said and added hurriedly, "I don't mean I don't love you, Fani, it's just - she's inside my head, she's like the best part of me that I never even dreamed existed, it's completely different… of course I love you and Arrin and - hey, where _is_ Egan?" She seized gladly on the change of subject.

"Being fussed over and generally spoilt by the Lower Cavern women." Fani regarded her stepdaughter thoughtfully. "Kat, you should explain some of this to your father. Perhaps not in those _exact_ words -" Her dark eyes twinkled "- but I think perhaps it's him that needs to understand, not me."

"Explain -!" Kat began, incredulously, and then remembered the sight of her father walking onto the stands at the Hatching. "Perhaps - I _could_. I'll - yeah, I'll try."

"Thank you." Fani smiled at her gently, using her free hand to smooth back a lock of glossy dark hair. She was wearing her wine-coloured silk dress and the glowlight slipped and glimmered around her.

Kat looked at her serene face and said impulsively, "Fani, you look so good. So happy. So beautiful."

"I am," Fani said, simply, and the light in her eyes was undeniable.

"I see that." Kat, shook her head, breathlessly, almost laughing. "I - Fani, what - I - I can't - I don't believe it."

Fani paused, considering, and then she admitted, "Nor can I, sometimes. I waited a long time, and I did think I was never going to get this. But I think it's going to be worth the wait, Kat. I think we're going to be all right."

"Yeah." Kat found the corner of her mouth curling up. "Yeah. I think so too."

Fani smiled and gestured so that Kat finally registered the bundle she was carrying, changing the subject. "I brought you some clothes. I know you left without anything, so I thought you might want these."

"Oh, _Fani_." Kat smiled. "Is there anything you don't think of? Thank you." She lifted the folded cloth out of her stepmother's arms. "Uh, come this way, let me put these away. Did you - I don't suppose you brought me a really nice dress?"

* * *

Kat's nap hadn't been too long, but the party was in full swing by the time she arrived back at the dining cavern with Fani. Her stepmother had tried to persuade her to wear her apricot silk, but Kat had held out for a sea blue wool gown that draped in classic folds to her ankles but flared when she walked. It was a good skirt to dance in; and Kat planned to dance a lot. She had a lot to celebrate.

Her feet were already tapping as they neared the wide double doorway. Kat stopped to flick back the hair falling loosely about her shoulders, feeling suddenly nervous, but before she had time to start wondering whether she wanted to go in at all Fani took her arm and tugged her into the doorway.

There was a natural pause in the music and Kat used it to orientate herself; the room was brightly lit and packed with people - people brightly dressed and noisy, laughing, dancing, chatting, crying, filling the room and overflowing out into the corridors in all directions, people eating and talking and bursting with joy and pride. She and Fani stepped out into the room; and, impossible as it seemed in a crowd that large, a space seemed to open up for them as everyone seemed to turn and look their way. Kat grinned, glancing at her beautiful stepmother. "You've stopped the room again."

Fani looked up at her and then smiled herself, shaking her head. "Not today, Kat. Today they're looking at you. You're - glowing." Kat blinked at her, and Fani slipped her arm free of the girl's and said calmly, "I'm going to get something to eat. Do come and join us when you're finished here."

"When -?" Kat began, questioningly, but was interrupted.

"Kat!"

"Huh?" She had half turned round when someone grabbed her from behind; she struggled instinctively, but then recognised the boy and flung her arms around his neck in return. "Jasor! I mean, wow, sorry, J'sor! Wow. Wow!" Her spirits bounced upwards; from her happy and contented state she suddenly felt an energy jolt and hugged her friend tightly. "I don't believe this! This is so great!"

"I know!" J'sor was beaming, his odd blue-and-green eyes shining. "I know, I know! We're weyrlings! We're dragonriders! You got the queen, Kat! You did it! I knew you would! I knew you deserved it!"

"Absolutely!" another familiar voice roared in her ear, and Kat squealed and let go of J'sor to fling herself into his older brother's arms.

"J'mat! Thank you so much, for everything. I can never thank you enough, really. You've been so amazing and so much fun ever since we met, I just -" She floundered for the words, so she squeezed him tightly and buried her face in his chest.

"Hey." J'mat grinned at her. His brown hair was tousled and standing up around his face, giving him an endearing, youthful look, and his face was red and flushed from the heat of the room. "You've got years to figure it out."

"Yes." Kat nodded emphatically, grinning fit to burst. The crowd had closed in again, but fighting through it came some faces she knew; Ferrin wriggled her way through to thump her enthusiastically on the back, followed by Tyrel and some of the other girls, and those of the boys that she'd begun to get to know. Even strangers were pushing through to congratulate her and introduce themselves; Kat laughed and spun round, giddy and high with euphoria. This was a moment that she never wanted to end. This time was better than anything she thought she'd ever have; she'd thought that everything good in her life was so far in the past she could barely remember it; but now she could actually believe that it was only just beginning.

"Lady Katriel."

The fair, boyish face addressing her was so far out of context that it took Kat a minute to place him; in the end it was his Harper blue attire that gave her the clue. "_Tercel_! What are you doing here?"

The Harper journeyman grinned. "I came up with the Masterharper and Lord Galen. They wanted extra players for the Hatching feast, and gitar's my speciality, so I, uh, suggested I might be useful…"

Katriel snorted with laughter. "Then I'm glad I gave you something worth coming to see! It's good to see you, Tercel. How are you? How's - you know, things? Back at Lemos?"

"Good. They're good." Tercel touched her arm. "Believe it or not, Lady Katriel - I actually think that maybe this was what was needed."

"Call me Kat," she said. He'd earned it, in a way; she'd never been anything but unfriendly to the young harper, and he'd never for a minute stopped trying to help. "Thanks, Tercel. I - you know, I hope we meet again."

"We will," he promised, solemnly. "Hey, uh, Lady Ka - Kat. Um. I th - we thought, uh, since it's your party really, being the new queenrider and all - uh, just wait here a minute."

Intrigued, Kat watched as he picked his way across the room and slid himself in between the harpers, bending down to speak into the leader's ear. J'sor picked at her sleeve. "Who's that, Kat?"

"Tercel. Uh, he's the harper at Lemos, he's -"

She forgot the rest of what she was going to say. The harpers had been taking a quick break, wiping sweaty faces and gulping drinks, but at the leader's signal they picked up their instruments again, readying themselves. Then, at his nod, they played three distinctive chords. Three chords that modulated into an intricate rippling introduction that Kat knew as well as the dusty, empty tunnels of the hold where she was born. Her mouth dropped open.

Other couples were moving off the dance floor, congregating around the edges of the room or heading for the tables laden with steaming savoury food, muttering in surprise at the appearance of a tune they didn't know. Kat found the space clearing rapidly, leaving her at the centre of the dance floor as the long opening for the Lemos Gather Dance played.

At her shoulder J'mat grinned. "I know this one now," he remarked, loud enough for some of the other couples to hear. "Want to dance, Kat?"

"Not on your life, brownrider!" The confident, cheerful voice came from across the room. Kat clapped her hands with delight and spun around, grinning, to face Arrin. Her handsome, charismatic uncle was striding across the room to join them. Behind him she could see the high table; the Weyrleaders were seated there with the Masterharper and some other dignitaries, but the face she picked out of the crowd was her father's - he wasn't smiling, and his expression seemed rigid, but he was there.

"May I?" Arrin reached her side and bowed deeply, a courtly play that made Kat giggle.

"Certainly." She timed her curtsey with the music so that as she rose she reached out her hands to him and he swung her into the first turn. Then they were away; the rhythm of the tune was relentless and insistent and Kat's feet were on fire, spinning in to meet Arrin's gently guiding hands and flying outwards again, her skirt and hair floating around her. She glimpsed J'mat's face, startled and suspicious, and remembered that he didn't know Arrin; had no idea that this golden-skinned, lion-like stranger was her father's brother. She giggled again, but the steps were too intricate; she wobbled and Arrin caught and steadied her, flashing his engaging smile. "Steady, Kat! That wouldn't pass at Lemos."

The steps took them apart briefly and it was a couple of seconds before he caught her again with both hands on her waist and she was able to retort. "We aren't at Lemos. Although it looks like _you_ have been."

"Yep." Arrin lifted one of her hands and guided her into a fast spin as he talked. "After the Gather, I went back to Grey Cliffs… well, I set out. But - I don't know, something Fani said. I guess I've grown up since I left. I - she made me think it was time to set things right. Not forever," he clarified, hurriedly. "Egan can _have_ Lemos, I've got the seas now, Kat. It's so free - and so fierce - Kat, you've no idea - well, I suppose you will. You're going to learn to fly, and it's like how I imagine that to be. I _couldn't_ give it up now. But - yeah, I'm back for a little while."

"I'm glad," Kat told him. She couldn't hug him as they whirled around the dance floor, but she hoped the heartfelt tone in her voice would convey the message. "Arrin - you made everything all right. I - I'm so thankful. I'm so happy."

"I don't think I did," Arrin said, slowly, as their feet dodged through the knotty backwards cross steps. Kat did a half spin and leant back against her beloved uncle and they repeated the pattern. "I - think it was already done. When I arrived. Kat, when I arrived, he and Fani were sitting in his study. Not discussing household management or anything. Just sitting there together."

Kat half-broke her step again as she stared up at him in disbelief. "No. She didn't say anything! He must - he must have made the change, Arrin. How? Why?" She shook her head. "Why now? After all these years… I didn't even think he could."

Arrin glanced over her head, then grinned, deeply mischievous, and said, "Ask him yourself."

"What's that supposed -?" Kat's question was broken off as her uncle spun her energetically into the final turn and her feet automatically moved into the whirling crossover steps for the change of partners before she even wondered whether there would be someone waiting to catch her. There must be, she supposed, or Arrin wouldn't have sent her off. J'mat probably -

The arms she landed in belonged to someone a good deal taller than J'mat. And where J'mat was a good dancer but inexperienced with the complex measures, this person's feet moved into the first steps as easily as hers did; but he wasn't letting go properly, spinning into the dance with the right looseness and sense of rhythm. Instead he seemed stiff and out of place.

Kat dared to look upwards. "Father."

"Katriel."

His greeting was as formal as ever, but Kat sensed a new hesitancy about him. For the first time she could ever remember, she realised, Galen had no idea what to say to her. 'He doesn't know how I feel,' she realised, wonderingly. 'He doesn't know if I hate him. He never did; but now - he _cares_.'

Cautiously, watching for his reaction, she smiled at him. And slowly, looking as though it was still an unaccustomed motion, her father's mouth stretched into the answering expression.

Feeling oddly tearful and yet greatly daring, Kat said, "Father - what happened?"

Galen stiffened up immediately, his feet stilling, and Kat cringed. It looked as though he still wasn't ready to answer personal questions - if indeed he ever would be. But then, to her astonishment, Galen said, harshly, as though he was dragging the words out of a deep pit, "I think I focused so hard on what I had lost that I forgot to consider what I might find. Until Fani reminded me."

Fani. Kat looked over at her stepmother, and found her father doing the same; and just for an instant he looked unlike she'd ever seen him; surprised and tender, and even afraid. "I think - he's falling in love again,' she thought, astonished. 'And she - maybe she has been all along.'

"I think - we need to talk," was what she said. "About - lots of things. But - about my mother, mostly."

He looked down at her sharply, his eyes flashing; and then again he paused. "Yes," he admitted. "But this is neither the time nor the place."

"Right." Kat could feel her cheeks aching again with the size of her grin, even as her eyes glittered and threatened to spill. "Right, that's - wait." She suddenly remembered. "Father, actually - there is something that can't wait."

He didn't seem to invite a question, but he didn't try to stop her either, so Kat tensed up her shoulders and asked carefully, "Father, about the bronzerider. I'den. About when he died…"

She trailed off, unable to frame the question. How could she? How could she ever ask if he was a murderer?

And Galen surprised her yet again, because his shoulders relaxed; just the tiniest fraction, but his voice was perfectly natural when he said, "He fell. I was supposed to meet him. When I got there, he was lying at the bottom of the cliff. His dragon had gone. He was dead. I wasn't even there."

And Kat did start to cry, her eyes overflowing and her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. Her father watched her, awkward and disapproving, and she laughed and swiped an arm across her eyes. "Here. We have to dance. We'll get stepped on." She listened for a second to pick up the rhythm and then took a couple of small steps to slip herself back into the ancient patterns of the Gather Dance. Galen hesitated a couple of beats more and then followed her.

And he was stiff and awkward and unpractised, and they still had talking and explaining to do. And Kat had years of training to do, and a desperate need to make friends and for a tact and diplomacy that she'd never experienced. But right here and now, Lumeth sleeping in her mind and Fani and Arrin, J'mat and J'sor and Tercel and Ola and the weyr watching, Kat danced with her father, and she knew that there was nothing she couldn't overcome.

And it wasn't her imagination that as he spun her into his chest, Galen murmured, "Congratulations, Katriel. Queenrider."

**AN: So... that's signing off from me for a while. I just started university this week, and I want to do a whole lot of clubs and activities associated with that, so I don't know how much time I'm going to have for a bit. I'll still be around, reading and reviewing, and I'll be writing, but I won't post unless I get completed work, since I don't want to leave you hanging the way I did with this. So (shameless plug) - if you want to read more of my work and you haven't already, please do look up my older stories featuring some of the same characters, and let me know what you think!**

**And finally, last but possibly most important to me, thank you so much to all of you who have taken the time to read this story and let me know what you think. Without wishing to be too gushing, it's hearing that feedback that makes it possible for me to go on even when I'm terminally stuck and uninspired. You know who you are. Thank you.**


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